


Siege

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [9]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Play, Anatomy, Angst, Biting, Blasphemy, Canon Era, Confessions, Consent, Dirty Talk, Explicit Consent, Flashbacks, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Goodbye Sex, Hand Jobs, Kissing, Light Dom/sub, Lube, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Negotiations, Oral Sex, Rimming, Shakespeare Quotations, Sharing, Spoilers up to s2e10, Storytelling, Swearing, Switching, Teasing, Tension, minimal plot, narration, so much fucking angst though - sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-08 14:09:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14695800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: “What are you doing, brother?” asks Aramis, softly, feeling his pulse pick up, unsteadily, keeping it locked down under what he hopes is still a mild expression.“I’m trying to work out,” says the other, concentration threading tension through his voice, “what makes otherwise sane, strong people completely lose their shit when they kiss you.”***Aramis and Porthos, weary but unwilling to quit their deepening conversation in the garrison mess, are getting close to answering some crucial questions. Or maybe just one…Not standalone - you’ll ideally need to have readAll This Nightfirst. There are a fair number of clues if not…





	1. Fusillade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which shots are fired from both sides, and trebuchets are lined up.

“And why are you looking so pleased with yourself?” He can hear his tone, and it’s not quite as bouncy as he’d like it. There’s a sourness that weighs on the banter.

If Porthos hears it, he affects not to notice. “I surprised you,” he explains, cheerfully.

“Yes, you did,” he replies, relieved to hear that there’s warmth inside his chest and out in his voice. “I’d honestly never heard of such a thing.” And he hasn’t - he’s met women who could climax purely from him applying himself to their straining nipples. And there are women who have thrilled and shuddered throughout their bodies purely to the sound of his voice, telling them in sonorous, aching detail all he longs to do with them. He’s heard that there are men can climax simply from anal stimulation. Women too, for that matter. The experimentation that he and Adèle had indulged in, in both directions, testing this scenario, is still very accessible to his memory. All too accessible, if he’s honest.

But he’s never heard of anyone - man or woman - who could climax by simply doing too many press-ups. He wonders idly if it’s just those movements, or whether any other exercise would serve.

“And you a medical man.”

“Barely.” He loses another moment to contemplation. “Do you…” he starts, slowly, “still…?”

“Oh yeah. When I have the time. Just not, you know, in company.”

Aramis lets out a bark of laughter, surprising even himself. “You’ll have thews you could bounce rocks off at this rate.”

Porthos mock-preens. “I already do.”

They laugh. Then Aramis snorts, pointing at Porthos.

“What?”

“‘Taking care of business’!” and he curls up slightly, sniggering.

“What?”

“Well, you know, that thing you say when you excuse yourself to…”

“Yeah?”

Porthos has grown strangely stony, and he blunders on, seeking camaraderie. “And I’m just imagining you, in the woods, doing onanistic calisthenics in the undergrowth instead.”

“You’re just imagining me, are you?”

A pause. “Yes…?”

“Naked.”

Another pause. “Well, I am _now_ …”

“Aramis,” he says, shaking his head, and he’s smiling again, thank God, “we’re going to have to have a word about that imagination of yours.”

“I imagine we do.”

Porthos shakes his head again. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

And it’s on the tip of his tongue to say “Yes, you can,” but he thinks better of it.

This is Porthos. Closer than any brother. And tomorrow’s vow awaits.

There’s time. Time to redeem himself yet.

He picks up his wine. “Hark at the wind,” he says.

“Aye,” replies Porthos with a quirk of lip he can’t quite identify.

“ _Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing_ ,” he mutters.

“What’s that?”

“I’m misquoting, I think. I was thinking of Lear, and came up Hamlet. No: Macbeth.”

“What?”

“Shakespeare.”

“Oh, him,” says Porthos, dismissively.

“You remember…?”

“It was all in English, so…”

“Well, we were in England.”

“I liked the bit with the dog.”

It’s an old joke, and not even original, but it’s a small binding of shared history, and they’re both reaching for that warmth right now. Aramis smirks and rolls his eyes on cue.

“And, as I do recall, you told me that the women on the stage weren’t women.”

“Ah. No.”

Porthos shakes his head. “The English are _weird_.”

“That they are.”

“Do you reckon that Pierre was English?”

“Hmm? Oh, no, well. I’m not sure, to be honest. I don’t think he was French, but I don’t know if he was English. He spoke too many other languages, for a start.”

“You never asked?”

“It never came up.”

Porthos grins. “You were focused on his talented tongue in other ways, then.”

Aramis buries his eyes in his hand, then looks up to remonstrate with his friend, and stops. Porthos isn’t being malicious or prurient; on his face is exactly the same expression as if Aramis had told him of an encounter with an actress or a courtesan or a noblewoman - that is, someone outside of Porthos’s usual radius of taste in bedmates - but no more strange than that.

Aramis reflects that, in some ways, he’s a bit of an idiot. He could have told his friend this any time over the last few years, and it wouldn’t have mattered. He’s not sure whether it not mattering is worse or better than it mattering. On further reflection, he suspects that “There was this actor one time” pales in comparison with “I slept with the Queen of France and got her with child”, so there’s that to take into consideration as well. _And there’s more_.

Instead he smirks a little, says: “It would have seemed positively impolite to do otherwise.”

Porthos nods and grins appreciation with a small chuckle. “What was the show like?”

“Hmm? Oh, Chanticleer. Good, yes. A mix of singing and speaking. They all quietened down when Philomène came on stage, focused like, like _marksmen_ , they were.” Maybe, he thinks, there’s a better word, but it’s stuck in his head. “You could have drowned in the hush. She held them in the palm of her hand the whole time. And they roared adoration between set pieces, Porthos - never has someone been more aptly named.”

“What was it again?”

“Philomène de Bien-Aimé.”

“So how come you can remember that made-up name, but not…”

“Oh, hush.”

Porthos chuckles. He sniffs. “And after?”

“After?”

“You know what I’m asking.”

“I…”

“And don’t tell me that a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell - it’s a bit late for that.”

“Hmm. Huh.”

“And, see, thing is,” Porthos is earnest now, “you _are_ a gentleman, aren’t you?”

“Well, only in so much as…”

“I _mean_ ,” he says, patience straining in his voice, “I can’t imagine you leaving a lady wanting unless some dire emergency came up…”

“Well…”

“Or any gentleman, for that matter.”

“Porthos…” He’s injecting as gentle a warning note as possible.

“What?”

“I. I don’t know if I want to talk about it.”

“Oh.” And Porthos almost sounds… is he… hurt?

Aramis is seeing those eyes again - liquid and candle-struck, pupils enormous, before he leans forward, kisses a trail from just below Aramis’s ear, down his neck, lingering with his tongue along the bar of his collarbone, swirling down to his nipple, turning maddening spirals around it, sucking liquid fire into his chest.

He’s feeling the press of lips travelling lower, feels again the tumult of fear and desire, the helpless way his hips rock in the girdle of his arms, the shameless way he cries out.

He’s catching again the chagrin: “I had no idea. I thought. I thought you experienced. I-” Him scrambling to comfort, to explain, to beg: “Teach me, show me, let me. Please. I want-”

Oh, God.

I want to bring you.

Him chanting a false name, making it true, laying it in layers on the night air with a voice like a sweet clarion.

He has to back away from this memory _right now_. His body is starting to betray him. He’s too drunk for this. He’s nowhere _near_ drunk enough.

His fever-warm weight against me. Smooth, strong arms. A complex weave of scents. His eyes enormous in that mellow light. The texture of him against me, inside my… Christ God, man - _stop_.

He shuffles his chair a crucial hitch further under the table, cursing himself on trembling breath as the scrape of wood on stone brings Porthos’s attention around.

“I’ve remembered her name,” says Porthos, who has clearly been following his own, much colder track of thought.

“Who?” His heart is careening in his chest, and he takes slow, deliberate breaths against it.

“The Cardinal’s woman - Adèle.”

“Yes, Adèle.”

“Then Alice. Your Alice, that is.”

“Sweet Alice.” He feels half a smile surfacing. “Yes.”

“And the Governess.” Porthos is not smiling. Hasn’t for a while now.

Aramis’s jaw tightens. “Lady Marguerite de Lansac.” Two days dead and all for what? He feels fetters around his wrists again. Sees the Devil herself walk him free in answer to his prayer.

“What?”

“No-one ever remembers her name.”

“Right. Her, anyway.”

“Hmm. Where’s this going?”

“And not forgetting the Queen of France.”

He tries for light: “I thought you all _told_ me to forg-”

Porthos is implacable. “And that lad - Pierre. Or Philomène.”

Where the hell is this leading? “Yes,” he manages, a little stiffly. Lambent eyes, liquid voice, guiding hands. Here, and _here_. _Yes_ , Henri, just, _oh!_

“And these are just a sample.”

He clears his throat. “Right.”

“Strong-minded, clever, powerful people.”

“Did you _meet_ Marguerite…?”

“ _People who had nothing to gain_ ,” he says, louder, “is what I’m trying to say.”

He feels his jaw clench. “Actually, Porthos, what _are_ you trying to say? As moral censure goes, you’re not exactly the purest vessel. And it can’t be jealousy - you’ve not exactly lacked for amorous attention yourself these last few years.”

Porthos grinds his teeth briefly. “Not what I’m saying.”

“Well then, what?”

A pause. “It’s a mystery, is what I’m saying.”

“And you have no time for mystery…?” he asks him, softly.

Porthos grunts, folds his arms. Aramis looks down at the table, watches his fingertip stirring the breadcrumbs idly.

Porthos suddenly scoots closer with a scrape of chairlegs on flagstone. He leans in and stares at Aramis, eyes roving about his face.

“What are you doing, brother?” asks Aramis, softly, feeling his pulse pick up, unsteadily, keeping it locked down under what he hopes is still a mild expression.

“I’m trying to work out,” says the other, concentration threading tension through his voice, “what makes otherwise sane, strong people completely lose their shit when they kiss you.”

He reaches forward and touches a blunt fingertip to the curve of bone next to Aramis’s left eye. _Orbit_ , he thinks, anatomy diagrams suddenly in front of his inner sight like a shield. Porthos’s touch trails down it momentarily, gently. _Frontal, zygomatic_.

“Is it these?”

“Hmm?” He swallows, hopes the other doesn’t notice.

“The big, brown eyes, the soulful expressions.” 

“I…” He struggles to hold his brother’s gaze mildly. But Porthos’s is slipping down anyway, followed by his fingers, trailing down his cheek to his throat. _Larynx, pharynx._

“Is it the voice? Before you even touch them - the soft, mellow tones, the way with words.” 

“Brother…”

“Hush, I’m trying to work it out.”

He stiffens as Porthos’s hand comes up again, this time to echo the gesture he’d described with Pierre, fingers cupped at the junction of jaw and neck, but thumb on his lips. He feels his breath grow shallow, his head light.

Porthos is very close now. “Is it this?”

If he opens his mouth right now, it’ll only make things much worse.

 _Ramus, mentolabial sulcus, philtrum_ …

He closes his eyes, takes two calming breaths. He reaches up and gently brushes Porthosʼs thumb to the side, says, as lightly as he can manage, small, self-mocking smile in place: “There’s really only one way to find out, isn’t there? I mean, you’re welcome to try, but…”

And Porthos leans in and kisses him on the lips.

Head reeling, blood clanging in his ears, palms tingling with shock, eyes wide, he barely has a chance to respond with more than a graceless gulp of sound before his friend is drawing away again, staring at him, rubbing the back of his hand over each side of his moustache, then settling his fingertips against his own mouth, brushing them over and over.

Aramis tries a smile, flicking his eyebrows. “Well?” he demands, aiming for insouciance and probably coming up querulous.

Porthos continues to rub his lips against his fingers, moving his head gently from side to side. He stops, gives that downturned facial shrug, sniffs, says: “Nah, didn’t do much for me.” He gives a small, bleak, indifferent smile. “You?”

“Hmm,” he replies, not ready to hear his voice still quavering.

“Frankly,” Porthos continues, “ I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I’ve had better…”

“Oh, _bloody have you?!_ ”

This time it’s him who leans in, peeling Porthos’s fingers away, taking his jaw in both hands, laying soft, careful lips and a slip of tongue across his mouth, lending an undulating pressure against him until Porthos opens on a moan, tilts his head, drives his own tongue between their lips and deep into Aramis.

Aramis gasps and feels his eyes rolling back, curls his tongue reflexively around Porthos’s, tugging a more high-pitched sound from the man as he closes his lips briefly on the hot muscle of him, and now they’re standing in a clatter of chair, lips and tongues crushing and grinding, grappling in a flail of hands, Porthos tearing Aramis’s hat off to sail it away somewhere. A few moments later, the bigger Musketeer is slowly, but implacably, crowding Aramis backwards and Aramis, guessing their destination, gives way, groaning when he’s pushed against the wall. Porthos presses into him full-length, all that strength bent on pinning Aramis in place, hands over his wrists, knee between his legs.

Aramis groans and writhes, control completely abandoned, head back. Porthos leans in and roughly mouths at his neck, all beard and tongue.

Christ God, Christ God, is all Aramis can think, lost in sensation and something terribly like fear that twines through him. His hips rock forward of their own volition, grinding into Porthos for a moment, who immediately jerks his own hips back a crucial few inches, nipping Aramis with his teeth.

He pulls his head up, hovering no more than an inch away from Aramis’s mouth, breathing the same heaving air. Aramis’s eyes shoot open, and he can feel his eyebrows go up in the middle. “Now, now,” says Porthos, the menace in his voice maybe only half-mock, “none of that. Where’s the famous restraint? Where’s the _teasing?_ ”

And Aramis finds that he is terribly angry, just for a breath, before pulling it in. He’s been played in the worst way. And that merits a response in kind.

He lets himself relax back into the wall, stretching his shoulders like a well-fed cat easing into a patch of sun, rather than a tired and startled man pressed against a cold wall by his best friend, somewhere between terror and an almost ungovernable arousal.

Almost.

He smiles softly, warmly, uses his most reasonable voice. “Now you have me here, brother, what do you propose to do with me?”

Porthos’s jaw bunches once, twice. His nostrils flare. “Mostly just watch you squirm, I reckon.”

“Ah, right. Do let me know when I’ve squirmed enough, will you? It is getting rather late.”

Porthos’s jaw jerks sideways once, suppressing what looks like a kind of angry amusement. He says nothing. Score one.

“And what counts as squirming, anyway?” He lets a slow ripple move up his body, weaving his neck a little. He hums a Spanish dancing song that he knows full well Porthos will remember, shifts his hips in time to it. “No?”

Porthos says nothing.

“Or this?” He lifts his knee, rubs his inner thigh lightly against Porthos’s. A tiny hitch in breathing over the susurrus of soft leather, the merest darkening of his eyes, maybe - hard to tell in this light. Let’s call that score two.

“Don’t…” murmurs Porthos, low in his throat. A definite hit.

“All right.” He lowers his leg slowly, moistens his lower lip, bites it briefly with a quirk of eyebrow, watches Porthos’s eyes flick away, hears his breathing shift again. _Three_. “Tell me, then.”

“Tell you…”

“What you want.”

Porthos shakes his head, ever so slightly. “Fuck you,” he says quietly to Aramis’s shoulder after a while, head still going side-to-side.

“Oh, _really_ …”

“ _Shit_.”

Aramis can’t help it - he smiles, amused, just a little, and suddenly Porthos is growling, kissing that smile off him, hot and urgent, all tongue and moans. The pressure lifts, just enough, from his wrists, and he twists his hands out to seize his friend’s face, run one hand down to cup the back of his neck, scratching gently at the skin there. Porthos shudders and Aramis smiles against him, then lets out a helpless moan as Porthos delves deep with his tongue, presses his body against him again. Now, as he curves his tongue about Porthos’s, capturing his lips again and again, he has one hand scratching deep into Porthos’s curls, the other planing down his back to bring him harder into his body.

Porthos pulls back, breathing hard, sets his forehead against Aramis’s. All Aramis’s residual anger melts to compassion. “Are you all right?”

Porthos nods against him. “Mm-hmm?”

“Ah. Good.” He takes stock of the situation. Hmm. “Heel and toe,” he mutters.

“What was tha-”

Aramis shifts his weight in a dancer’s move and pivots his unprepared brother so that he is now the one with his back against the wall. Rather to his surprise, Porthos moans, a long, delicious note, and he presses against him in turn, nuzzling his neck, mentally berating himself for forgetting that elementary lesson - people often do to you in these situations as they wish done to themselves.

Speaking of which…

As Porthos starts to rock against him, he pulls back, hears a growl of frustration, and grins, then casually kicks Porthos’s feet into a wider stance to bring him a little lower, a little more manageable. He leans his forearm against Porthos’s collarbone, murmurs: “Maybe you need an exercise in control.”

“No,” says Porthos immediately, stiffening, neck down, shoulders up. “No, nope,” shaking his head vehemently.

“Ah.” Aramis has a very strict rule about _no_. Often does not mean always. He nods, shifts his arm off his chest, leans, presses a kiss to Porthos’s forehead, pushes his weight away, preparatory to moving to a more seemly distance.

“Where,” growls Porthos as he starts the first proper step back, “the _fuck_ do you think you’re going?” He looks up, brings his hands to Aramis’s hips.

“Ohhh…” He leans back in, hands on the wall either side of Porthos’s shoulders, slowly allowing his weight to drape the man’s full length. “Is _this_ what you want, brother?”

“Fuck,” mutters Porthos, eyes wild. “Fuuuck…”

Aramis, humming, lets his body ripple down the length of Porthos, once, twice, thr- and Porthos, groaning, pulls his hips to him, starts to grind in earnest and Aramis, grinding back, maintaining his dancing beat, bends to kiss Porthos’s neck, one hand cupped behind it, the other bracing on the wall. He starts gently then, as Porthos’s moans begin to show a keening edge, adds more pressure, bringing tongue and teeth into play until Porthos swings his head and hooks Aramis under the chin with a broad forefinger to kiss him again.

And what Aramis is finding strangest of all is that so very little of this is strange - he already knows Porthos’s body so well; has wrestled it, sparred with it, bound it, stitched it, hugged it, helped to haul it home after particularly rough nights, held it back from incautious conflict, slept next to it in all sorts of places and terrains for _years_ now, shared its heat in cold times, knows, he’ll be bound, most of its strengths and weaknesses. He knows Porthos’s scent like he knows his own. Knows, also, his groans - how his voice sounds in pain and happiness, sorrow, relief, anger, victory, and high good humour.

And now, he thinks, I know how he sounds when nigh-on lost in profound arousal.

And. And it’s almost too late.

No.

No, not.

No.

God, he’s so _hard_. Both of them are. Christ have mercy.

“Fuck,” Porthos is muttering against him. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

He kisses the word from his mouth, pulls his disbelief away with his breath, pushes his fingers into the stiff curls at the back of his friend’s head and tugs him, trying, with all his might, to be closer.

Porthos reaches down and starts to unbutton Aramis’s doublet - slow but emphatic, deft, every uncoupling undoing him a little further, feeling strength ebb in a gorgeous rush with each one until Porthos’s hands are skimming his ribs with a shift of shirt fabric against his abruptly sensitive skin. And now he’s pressing one large, warm hand to the small of his back, the other sliding higher, fingers digging rhythmically at the muscles in his shoulders. It’s almost painful, and it’s absolutely wonderful.

It also serves as a useful distraction from the fact that, if he’s not careful, he may climax _very_ soon. And now he’s thought of that he _really_ needs to think about someth-

“I,” gasps Porthos. “I have to stop. I. Fuck.”

He pulls his groin from Aramis’s, hangs off his shoulders like he’s just run a mile in full armour.

“I. Suppose,” he pants, from somewhere near Aramis’s breastbone. “That _you_ ’re. Just, _ah_ , fine!”

“Actually,” he says, pulling laughter into his voice, hearing it tremble with at least three emotions he can name, “your timing couldn’t be better.”

“Well - _hah!_ \- I’m renowned for it.”

“So I hear.”

Porthos looks up on a twist of mouth. “You been asking around?”

“I don’t need to,” he tells him. “People tell me things. Specifically: women tell me things.”

Porthos shakes his head with a small up-down smile and hauls himself vertical. Looking at him, Aramis belatedly realises the reason for the small ache in his calves and neck, and something must show on his face because Porthos frowns suddenly.

“Ah, nothing,” says Aramis, stretching his legs and rolling his ankles one at a time. “I’ve just never kissed anyone taller than me before.”

“Who knew an extra couple of inches could make so much difference, eh?”

Aramis has nothing to say to that but “Hah!” as he gently massages the back of his own neck. 

“Maybe we should sit down,” rumbles Porthos, reaching for the nearest chair. “I could do with a breather.”

But when Aramis goes to take another seat, Porthos snags him and pulls him into his lap. He blinks rapidly and murmurs: “Another first,” then leans into Porthos’s chest and nuzzles into the side of his face. Porthos makes a sound that’s suspiciously close to a purr and nuzzles back before swerving into a slow kiss.

The tenderness of this melts something inside Aramis. He feels like a cliché made flesh for an aching moment. Six kissing minutes later, however, and all restraint has been dropped, Aramis now sitting astride him, unable to tell where his groans end and Porthos’s begin.

And maybe, he thinks; maybe I _am_ going to come in my breeches like an adolescent. Fuck it. Porthos’s fingers are running up and down his spine, greedy, occasionally just pulling his hips into his lap for a ringing series of grinding motions, the next minute plunging his fingers deep into his hair.

There’s a sharp clatter that cuts across the music of them like something falling and, though it’s clearly just a tile blown in the wind, it immediately brings home to them that they’re in a rather public place. They freeze, then ease apart, Aramis standing, swinging his leg away, bracing for Porthos to sniff, clear his throat, and say: “Well, we’ll say no more about that, eh?” or make some joke about being led astray by an infamous rake.

Instead, urgently: “We need to take this-”

“-elsewhere,” he finishes.

The look at each other. “D’Artagnan’s room,” they chorus on a nod.

Gathering hats, cards, and weapons; tidying bottles, plate, and cups by the simple expedient of lining them against the wall on the largest table; snatching a candle, they depart in a noiseless crash of well-trained footsteps and silent sniggers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I liked the bit with the dog…” is, of course, a reference to a repeated line in [Shakespeare in Love](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138097/). I also used to have a partner who liked to say that. True story…


	2. Battlements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which honesty is (probably) the best policy.

When they get to d’Artagnan’s room and close the door, Aramis more than half-expects Porthos to push him up against it, but instead he places the candle on a shelf, puts down his hat and weapons belts just under the window, takes Aramis’s off him and lays them gently, neatly, next to his. He then walks back and begins to peel Aramis’s doublet from his suddenly wobbly arms.

He sways, gazing at Porthos, adrift for a moment while the doublet’s weight slides away and Porthos starts that slow, precise, careful undoing of his breeches. He weaves his fingers into his own hair and continues to stare, watching Porthos’s absolute concentration, the slight frown on a face he almost knows better than his own, thinking very little at all except a tumbling litany along the lines of _this is real; this is real; this is really,_ really _real_.

Then Porthos starts to pull his shirt from his partially loosened breeches and something switches in Aramis.

Wait.

Hold on.

“Please,” he says, very softly. “Let me.”

Porthos looks up at him, sober mien melting into a soft, sideways smile edging on a dimple. Aramis lays one hand against his cheek, slips the other between the high, mailed collar of Porthos’s doublet and his shirt, starts to slide it off his shoulder, then brings the other down to do the same. The heavy leather slithers with a soft crash to the ground. He runs his hands around his neck to the ties of his shirt, starts to loosen them, lays a kiss against the dark skin revealed, slipping his tongue briefly to caress. He then moves back, drawing his hands down Porthos’s arms, squeezing gently, rhythmically, as he goes, face softly awed, a show of appreciation, lavishing a wordless praise where there’s only been space for hard-slapping jokes before.

He reaches his waistband and starts to pull his shirt out at the front, inch by inch, hearing Porthos hiss a little. He knows that Porthos has no truck with braies, preferring the more old-fashioned approach of using his shirttails, so that this fabric is dragging directly over his cock, drawn tight by his breeches.

Porthos makes a sound like _Nnf_ as the fabric clears, and now Aramis is seeing, clear in his mind’s vision, Porthos’s cock straining directly against the leather seams. He does not touch that bulge, precisely because he wants to, very badly. Instead, he reaches behind Porthos, arms encircling him as his chest presses close to the other man’s, tugging at the back of his shirt.

Porthos’s breath is coming heavy again, and Aramis angles his head back slightly, meeting his eyes, letting his mouth go a little slack. Porthos looks somewhat dazed, tilts his own chin down, gathers the back of Aramis’s head in one hand and presses a slow kiss to his mouth. Aramis’s eyes stutter shut and he sways, anchored and set adrift by the man in his arms. He tries to keep his mind clear enough to continue to pull the shirt free of the breeches, but that rhythm is also faltering.

He finally manages to release the fabric and runs his hands over the skin of Porthos’s back, firm palms up then light fingertips down, feels him arch, feeling his own mind clear a little. He pushes up under his brother’s arms, feels them sway overhead involuntarily so that Aramis can reach and tug him free of the billowing garment.

He steps back in frank admiration, looping the shirt over his hands. This is a vision to last decades - the breadth of the shoulders, the narrowness of the waist, the ripple of physique in between.

Porthos looks amused. “Want me to do a turn for you?” Before Aramis can stutter an answer, he lifts his arms out and up to either side and revolves slowly on the spot. As his back turns, Aramis runs his hand through his hair and allows himself the luxury of a bewildered expression, shaking his head to clear it. He lays the shirt over the footrail of the bed, face ready for when Porthos’s smile comes back into view.

“This is not the night for posing,” Porthos observes, and rubs his arms to accentuate this, goosebumps visible. Aramis points him at the brazier and dives to the window to shut it. D’Artagnan, he remembers, is borderline fanatical about fresh air.

The brazier is already well-laid, and Porthos gets it going with little effort. He beckons Aramis to stand with him, pulling him sideways into his arms, shivering theatrically. Heat starts to scatter from the metal, and Porthos tugs Aramis’s head around, begins to kiss him again, then, before he quite knows what’s happening, his breeches are falling to the tops of his boots.

“How-?”

Porthos smirks. “Fast fingers. Early training. Still comes in handy.”

Aramis’s muttered curse is muffled further by Porthos’s lips, then his own shirt, pulled up fast by those quick fingers. As soon as his face is free he darts forward to lay kisses on Porthos’s chest, finding his cold-tweaked nipple and strumming with tongue and teeth.

Porthos makes a surprised _uhnf_ and pulls Aramis closer, cupping his rear with both hands and squeezing gently. Heat floods Aramis’s torso and he pushes into Porthos, feeling himself swell in a rush. Porthos pushes his thumbs past the waistband of his braies and he moans, helpless again, blindly seeking Porthos’s mouth, clasping the back of his head, pressing his whole body against him and feeling him stagger.

They pull apart, breathing raggedly. “Bed,” manages Porthos, as he says: “Help me out of these boots?”

Laughing, Porthos gathers him in one arm and turns, propelling him onto the mattress with main force, kneeling to tug his boots. They slide off without too much difficulty, and Porthos starts, just this side of too slowly, on his hose, stroking clever fingers up to the top of each before starting to peel them down.

It’s beginning to feel, he reflects, as though every attempt to take control of this situation is persistently confounded by the other man, and damned if he isn’t wildly excited by this at the same time as maddeningly wrong-footed.

Suddenly it comes clear: he’s been trying to get the upper hand here, to control Porthos’s reactions as though this were a common-or-garden seduction, echoing encounters which he, if he’s honest, has always thought of as practice, as sparring sessions. He’s remembering the few times a liaison has dropped beyond his control - Pierre, the Queen - and how much more powerfully he was aroused by that, how much more lost, sees what he’s been avoiding for so long.

A tingling sensation from his foot brings him out of his reverie to find that he’s been sitting, sprawled back on his hands, legs outstretched, breeches partially puddled under his thighs, with Porthos starting to tickle one foot, gazing up at him with an expression somewhere between amusement and concern.

“You back?” he asks.

Aramis shakes his head to clear it, locks eyes with Porthos. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, indeed.” He grins, broad and warm. “Porthos?”

“Yes?”

“Come to bed with me?”

“Hell, yes.”

He scrambles to sit upright and, smirking at his friend, says: “Stand up.” Porthos complies, then catches his breath when Aramis reaches to undo his points.

He looks up at him. “Are you ready?”

Porthos’s voice is wonderfully unsteady. “Yes,” he says, nodding, eyebrows up in the middle.

Aramis runs his thumbs around the other’s waistband and starts to ease his breeches down, stops. “Ah.”

“ _What?_ ”

He looks up. “Boots.” 

“For _fuck’s_ …” growls Porthos. He hops and wrenches at each heel in turn while Aramis manages - just - not to laugh. When Porthos, trembling somewhere between frustration, embarrassment, and a small species of rage, stands in front of him again, he tilts soft eyes upwards, then leans to kiss Porthos’s belly, laying the merest slip of tongue with each press of his lips across the width of corded muscle. He waits until Porthos starts to sigh before starting again to ease the leather downwards over his hips.

And now he can smell the unique scent of Porthos’s arousal, and it goes to his head like strong wine. He kisses downwards with each half-inch of unpeeling, starting to taste where that arousal has left traces against his belly from earlier, his fingers slowly pushing the leather away so now he can feel, unmistakably, the swell of his arse, imagines, sudden as hallucination, burying his face there, feeling Porthos arch back towards him. His breath is thick in his throat, and Porthos’s flesh very warm against his lips.

He feels Porthos’s fingers grip his: “Wait, A-Aramis. Wait…”

He stops immediately, heels down and swallows the panic. _You moved too fast again. It’s all your fault. No, no._

No, it’s fine. Look up, smile.

He looks up and smiles, lets his eyes wash concern over his brother. They gaze at each other for a small, trembly while, Porthos looking furiously embarrassed but determined.

“Too fast?”

“Kind of.”

“Hmm.” A pause. “Shall I come up there or do you want to come down here?”

“I fancy sitting, actually.”

He nods. Porthos sits in a gust of breath to his left and Aramis can feel the heat radiating off his bare skin. It's very welcome right now, and, with that thought, he leans backwards, tugs the blanket and top sheet free and hauls them over Porthos’s shoulders. Porthos chuckles and casts one end around Aramis, drawing him close with his arm.

Aramis feels absurdly grateful for being hugged rather than shunned, run out on.

“Talk to me,” he says, softly, turning his body towards him.

“Thing is,” says Porthos, “I’m a bit scared. This,” he gestures. “I. I never thought… You know?”

“Me neither,” says Aramis,nodding.

“Right. So. So I’m worried.” 

Aramis can think of lots of things to be worried about, but says nothing, just lets the silence draw his friend with a nod.

“I’m. I’m worried about taking advantage of you.” 

Aramis coughs. “Oddly enough, one of my main concerns has been about taking advantage of _you_ ,” he says, slowly.

“So, we’re both fucking idiots.”

“Unquestionably.” Porthos barks a laugh at this. “But, regardless, we can just… talk, be specific about what we want from this…”

 _Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow_ , chimes his brain.

Shut up.

“I dunno about you,” says Porthos, slowly, “but I…” Aramis holds his breath, “want _everything_.” He turns towards Aramis. “You know?”

“Christ God.” 

“Yes?” His eyes are wide with appeal.

“Yes.” Aramis is finding it hard to breathe again.

“So.”

“Tonight?”

“Well, what… whatever we want.”

Aramis snaps a choke lead on the snarling urge to knock Porthos backwards and fuck him senseless.

“Well,” he says, as slowly as he dares ( _down, boy!_ ), “we’ll just take this as it comes and be honest with each other at each step - ask and answer.”

Porthos nods, solemn.

“Starting with,” he continues, “some more touching, finding out what works, what doesn’t,” ignoring the silent scream of frustration, the _you don’t have time!_

“Mate,” says Porthos, shaking his head, breaking towards that gorgeous grin. “It _all_ fucking works…”

“You’re just…”

“If I think about it too much it’s…” he shakes his head again, more rapidly, eyes unfocused, sober again. “It’s like when you’re in combat and you’re swinging along fine - bish bash - then you have a moment to think and it’s suddenly: ‘uh-oh - I could be dead; also - I’ve just killed three people,’ and mostly I’ve got a place to put that,” he touches the side of his head, “but sometimes it gets out at, like, totally the wrong time.”

Aramis can feel a pursed, slanted look come over him - he hopes Porthos reads it for the combination of chagrin and empathy he’s feeling.

“Right?” says Porthos, as though he’d agreed aloud. Good.

“So you shut it out and get on.”

“And sometimes get very drunk later.”

“Yes.”

They sit for a while in silence, thinking of the ‘risky pleasures’ that Musketeers are famous for when off-duty, wondering…

“This is fucking depressing,” says Porthos. “I preferred it when we were kissing, if I’m honest.”

Aramis makes up his mind. He kicks off his breeches, tucks his legs up, turns an ungainly half-circle so he’s still next to Porthos but now facing him, and says: “So let’s do that.”

Porthos smiles, relief washing off him. “Fuck, yes,” he says, and leans to cup Aramis’s face.

It starts slow, almost tentative, but soon the choppy rhythm kicks into something smoother; familiar and exciting all in one. Before long they’re leaning in further, hands roving freely now, the blanket tossed away, and Aramis is itching to sit astride him again, or the other way around - he doesn’t care, just wants to be close, touching everywhere, and Porthos’s right hand skims his ribs while the other is buried in his hair, tugging sporadically, sending rills of sensation down his body.

They break for air and he lays kisses down from Porthos’s neck, across his chest, then over his belly as Porthos gasps above him, then grabs his hip as Aramis’s lips skim close to his waistband. His hand shifts to Porthos’s thigh as he adjusts his balance, and he finds his thumb rubbing circles into it. The bulge in Porthos’s breeches jumps distinctly and he smothers an urge to laugh nervously. Porthos’s hand covers his. He looks up, sees on his friend the face of a man drowning.

“Aramis, please,” he sits up, waits for the negation, “please. Touch me. Oh _fuck!_ ” like a dam’s burst.

Aramis nods hurriedly and is opening his mouth to ask _where, exactly_ , when Porthos lifts his hand and places it firmly on his-

Holy Mother of God.

Aramis finds that he is swearing, very faintly; a continuous stream of incredulous blasphemy under his breath as he lightly cups the outline of Porthos’s cock and presses the heel of his palm up it. He runs his eyes up Porthos’s body, watches his eyes stutter shut and his mouth slacken as his head rocks back.

Porthos props his weight behind him on splayed hands and basks into Aramis’s touch. Aramis kneels up hurriedly, brings his mouth to the hollow just below his friend’s right shoulder, runs his tongue down over the swell of muscle, _pectoralis major_ , drives spirals around his nipple to clamp on it with lips and teeth, feeling and hearing Porthos shudder with bliss.

“Fuck,” he mutters, “no-one’s ever done that before…”

“Really?” Aramis is somewhere between delighted and appalled.

“Not even Flea. Would have thought for sure she’d… shit, sorry…”

Aramis makes lazy circles with his palm, says: “What for?”

“Just. _Auh._ Other, other people. Bad e-etiquette, innit.”

Aramis chuckles. “I really don’t mind. I like to hear what you’re thinking. Unless you start scoring us directly against each other on performance, in which case I’d have to take exception.”

Porthos laughs boozily then groans as Aramis shifts the pressure of his palm and presses loose, warm kisses up his torso. He rounds his neck and chin and starts to kiss his mouth, keeping the touches of his lips and tongue delicate, undulating, even as his hand keeps a steady, firm rhythm below.

Then Porthos has grabbed him and rolled him, and somehow they are lying, heads near the foot of the bed, Porthos half-covering him, kissing hard, grappling, laughing, kissing, his hands in Porthos’s hair, Porthos’s hand stroking down his flank, thumb circling briefly at his nipple, the shock of pleasure arcing through him, then that large, warm hand gathering his rear, a thigh between his thighs as they rock against each other.

Porthos pulls back a little. “Aramis.” His tone is mock-serious.

“Yes, Porthos.” He echoes it, great-eyed, watching for the tell-tale crinkle at the corner of his friend’s eye.

It comes. “Will you help me off with these breeches?”

“On one condition.”

“Yes?”

“You help me off with these braies.”

“Ridiculous fucking things anyway.”

“And yet…”

“So dainty,” mocks Porthos, lightly, then lowers his head to Aramis, who reaches up for the kiss that swerves his mouth and lands on his shoulder with a chuckle. Aramis returns the laugh which turns into a kind of voiced sigh as Porthos begins to work his way down his torso, the kisses becoming heavier as he goes, teeth coming into play until Aramis is writhing by the time he reaches the waistband of his underwear. Porthos switches up his weight so he can lay those clever fingers on the stays of this final garment. He loosens them without - somehow - touching Aramis’s body in any way, not until he lays his hands on his waist, fingers easing below the fabric.

He looks up at Aramis, a question in his eyes. Aramis nods, lifts his hips.

Oh God.

Aramis knows he’s a pretty sight unclothed, but Porthos’s frank admiration as the braies drop away goes to his head a little. He finds himself saying: “Well, are you just going to look?” and regrets the archness as soon as it leaves his mouth. Porthos silently accepts his chagrin, shifts to lie by his side, propped on his elbow.

There is a long space of nothing at all except sounds of breathing. Aramis peers at Porthos under quirked brows, several questions in his eyes.

“I don’t know what I’m doing!” confesses Porthos, on a kind of nervous chuckle.

Ohhh… 

“Sure you do,” he reassures him. “You know _exactly_ what to do.”

Porthos reaches and cups his shoulder. “Show me,” he says, breathing hard. “Show me how you like it.”

Something gives way in Aramis’s chest. After all these years of saying exactly this to nearly every partner he’s ever bedded, he now understands the effect it has had on them, said right, said sincerely, a pleading for direction and an offering of centred pleasure for the sake of pleasure itself.

Christ God.

He closes his eyes for a moment, taking studied breaths.

“Well,” he says slowly, “the thing is that… what I like most of all is to have other people come undone.” He opens his eyes, doesn’t quite meet Porthos’s. “I like…” he swallows, “to watch them, hear them… bring them with… with everything I have.”

“Ah.” Porthos reaches out. “With these,” he takes Aramis’s fingers, rubbing long lines from palm to tips. “With this,” he strokes his lips.

Aramis opens them softly, closing his eyes, takes the ends of his first two fingers, envelopes them with firm lips, biting down gently at the first knuckle. He strums with his tongue as he opens his eyes to gaze directly at Porthos, who gasps, eyes darkening, flushing slowly.

With a visible effort, he withdraws his hand, sends it down, choking out: “With this,” as he strokes Aramis’s throat.

Aramis hums.

Porthos trails his fingers down, deft and gentle, twists his hand, breathes: “With this,” from lungs that sound half-drowned as he lays his hand on Aramis’s cock.

“Yes,” he gasps. “Yes, yes.”

“Then do it,” he replies. “Do it.”

Oh God.

Trying to wrestle his brain into some semblance of civilisation, horribly aware of how hard he is, the way that his cock has dripped its aching arousal onto his belly, he lifts Porthos’s hand from him and kisses his knuckles, then turns it to lick the palm clear as the other man gasps. 

Aramis turns and murmurs: “Lay down,” to Porthos, who slowly lets himself drop to his back. “I’m going to take off your breeches now - is that all right?”

“Yes,” Porthos all-but whispers in return.

Aramis drops kisses all along the waistband, tugs Porthos’s hips up, and peels the leather down, achingly slowly. Remembering his own thesis of reflection earlier, he lays gentle nips of his teeth on him, rewarded by faint whimpers, which he soon echoes as he takes in that scent again.

He uncovers him reverently, caressing his thighs as he slides the breeches down and flicks them to fall to the floor. On the return journey, he lays kisses from ankles to just above the knee, then pauses and looks towards Porthos.

“I want to touch you,” he says. “I want to hold your cock in my hands. May I do that?” He can hear his voice shaking with need, knows Porthos must be able to hear it too.

“Yes,” he says, a little ragged.

Oh God. Warm, heavy, smooth. Here is the shock of new flesh Aramis has missed until this moment and it goes to his core like an crossbow bolt. Hungering for more, he slots himself down alongside Porthos, starting to stroke him, very lightly.

Porthos groans and turns to kiss him, stroking his face and hair as Aramis settles into his rhythm, modulating pressures and positions until he finds a combination that makes Porthos shift from _mmmh_ to _unh!_ and begin to rock into Aramis’s fist. Aramis slides his thigh between Porthos’s, leaning into his warmth, the play of muscles over his own. As Aramis moans his own desire, he feels Porthos thicken between his fingers, and his hunger mounts with a crash.

“Porthos…”

“Mmmh?” He is high-pitched and breathless.

“I’d like to taste you.” He hears his voice husky, warm, melting without even trying. “To, mmh, to take you in my mouth. May I?”

“Oh. Oh God.” He waits. “Oh, fuck, fuck yes!”

He kneels up carefully, shifting to twist Porthos onto his back, leaving his thigh where it is, trails a series of kisses down his torso, now freighted with more than just the desire to offer pleasure and connection in and of themselves. He can feel the strain in Porthos’s abdomen as he holds himself back from thrusting towards him, slows, spiralling his tongue across the tense flesh, tastes the trail of his arousal, feels his mind cloud with it, unable to think much other than that he wants more of this, wants the heat and the taste from the source, to feel Porthos - oh God, _Porthos!_ \- thrust into his mouth, to hear, taste, feel his dissolution into bliss.

He kisses up the side of his shaft, taking his time, lips and tongue against that swollen heat, brain supplying, blurred and whirling, the best of what he has received in the past, along with Pierre’s lessons. And, of course, applying the best lesson of all: try, listen, wait, repeat, shift, until the other person is a mess of writhing, shouting, pulsing ecstasy. He feels his own cock jump as Porthos’s does when he lays a lavish, wet swipe of his tongue that spirals just below the head.

“ _Mmmn!_ ” says Porthos, as though gagged, unable to prevent a swift push towards him. Smiling, Aramis lays his tongue against the head and just breathes on it, heavy and slow. “Oh God, please, Aramis, _please!_ ”

Aching and shivering with desire, he licks his lips (“ _Ah!_ ”), and closes them gently around the head (“ _Aauh!_ ”), masking his teeth. As slowly as he dares, he starts to descend, just a little way, then back, licking all around as he goes. He then repeats, but further, returns, descends, deeper, firmer, now humming his own desperate arousal onto Porthos, resisting the urge to take his hand to himself by the narrowest of margins. He splays his left hand across Porthos’s torso and away from himself, tweaking, stroking, scoring lightly with his nails, while his right hand cups and strokes Porthos’s tightening balls. He is rocking into him, gently but compulsively, swelling now to fill his mouth to an aching point; by the delicious sounds he’s making, the way he’s thrashing, only _just_ holding back from fucking Aramis’s mouth hard, he’s clearly close.

He withdraws for a few breaths, easing out his jaw, stroking the full length again with his right hand, taking time to drink in the sight of Porthos writhing, thrusting into his fist, the scent of him, the guttural sounds of abandon wrenched from between his teeth, his hands clawed into the sheets.

“I’m going to bring you now,” he tells him, voice modulated to the full curve of arousal. “Please, for the love of God, don’t hold anything back.”

“You. Ah. You. _Fuck! Aah!_ You may, mayregret, _unh!_ that.”

“Want to bet?”

“A- _always!_ ” with a hard flash of teeth.

Aramis, grinning, squeezes a little more firmly and bends to take Porthos between his lips again, and this time he’s thrusting hard into his mouth, as instructed. He revels in it, holding and pumping the base of him firmly so that he can’t choke him, but it’s still a close call, and he feels his throat rebel a couple of times, defends himself with renewed swipes of his tongue and a little extra pressure until Porthos is bellowing - muffled by the bitten flesh of his own forearm - while his other hand grips Aramis’s left wrist like a vice, and he feels the other’s convulsive climax echo through him like a detonation, swallowing and swallowing, drinking down pleasure that chimes in his guts like the finest brandy known to mankind.

“Aah, aah, aah, aah…” Porthos’s every outbreath is a diminishing whimper, and his body is sinking into the mattress. “Holll. Hol…”

“Shhh,” says Aramis, feeling a quiver of something like amusement and something like awe slip through him. “Hush, now.”

“No, nope. No shhh. Cmn.” 

“Hmm?”

Porthos makes the feeblest of beckoning gestures. “Zcmear. N. N huh. Huggh!” 

Oh! “Of course…”

He lowers himself gently down Porthos’s right side. Porthos is breathing like a man who’s mostly asleep. Or with a terrible brain injury, he thinks suddenly, winding his arms around Porthos’s sweat-sticky, heated frame.

“Mmm-hm-hmm…!” mutter-chuckles Porthos. “G’dam.”

“Come on,” croons Aramis, “just relax. Let it wash through you.”

“Mmmh…”

And that’s all he hears for a while. As Porthos’s breathing evens out, he drags the loose sheets and blanket about them and closes his eyes.


	3. Citadel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which grappling hooks are deployed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations of non-English words and phrases are available on hover-over.

“-amis…?”

“Aramis.”

From the look and sound of things it’s still dark out. There’s a scrap of candlelight somewhere, and something of the brazier’s glow still. He casts around with his other senses. He is naked, imperfectly swathed in bedclothes, and the room is redolent of sweat and spend… and something… achingly familiar.

“Aramis? You awake?”

It’s not a dream, it’s not a dream, _it’s not a dream_. “Yes…?”

A chuckle. “Did you sleep?”

“I think I must have done. You?”

“Hah! God, yeah. Feeling rested?” 

“I’ve been better rested. On the other hand…”

“Feeling sober?”

A sigh. “Yes.”

“Feeling horny?”

He considers this for a moment. “What would you do about it if I said yes…?”

“That depends.” His breath is warm against his ear. It’s followed by a brush of beard against his neck, an exasperated sigh, a shift of weight, and then lips and tongue pressing, tilting, wringing a tiny sound from the back of his throat.

“Ah, uh,” he clears his throat. “Depends on what?”

“Time and equipment, mostly.”

“You have all the equipment you need.”

He can _hear_ Porthos grinning. It’s a filthy grin.

“I do, however,” he says, “need to piss. Really badly,” he adds as he goes to sit up.

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” he says, drily.

“My pleasure.” A pause. “Though not, um, actually…”

“Oh. No, I didn’t…”

“Right.”

“Good.”

That small awkwardness done, he pushes a shutter back a crack, peers out of the window at the sky. It’s still full dark, and will be for a while, he reckons. Carried by the wind, a clock chimes somewhere. Half past something. All right…

“How about you?” he asks.

“Nah, that’s how come I’m awake.” 

“Ah.”

The candle is nearly out, has maybe ten minutes left in the still air, and Aramis is torn between wanting to see Porthos better and not wanting to use up d’Artagnan’s candle allowance. Well, they’ll just have to replace them, he thinks.

“What’s up?”

“Where you do think he keeps his candles?”

He sees Porthos’s figure twist, a dark sprawl against the sheets, and his breath catches, because it’s so familiar and so strange. They’ve shared a bed before, of course, on missions, but, while Porthos is generally unconcerned by any of his brothers seeing him naked, Aramis would never have permitted himself to stroke the hard lines of that amazing arse with his eyes while Porthos rummages down the side of the bed, to linger as the faint candlelight lingers, imagine his fingers and tongue roving where his sight roves.

“Here,” and a dim cylinder is flying through the air at him. It is half a candle, clearly used briefly many times. “He’s made that last,” remarks Porthos, echoing his thoughts.

“They says Gascons can see in the dark, like cats.”

“Or they’re just thrifty.”

“That too.” He lights it from the dripping remains of the other, makes a mental note to clear the wax from the shelf before they leave. Oh, and…

“What was that?”

He’s clearly been muttering. “We’ll need to change the sheets before we leave.”

“You’re seriously thinking about that?”

He turns to see Porthos sitting up, uncovered and grinning, gleaming in mellow, dancing highlights from the settling candle.

“Not any more.”

He walks slowly towards him, aware that he’s fallen back into the pattern of seduction gestures, a prowl of hips investing his stride. Porthos grins wickedly in appreciation, beckons with a small shuffle that indicates he wants Aramis in front of him. Aramis feels himself start to stir in earnest as he approaches, and then Porthos’s hands are on the back of his thighs, drawing him closer, forcing him to widen his stance, slot leading leg between his thighs if he wants, oh… Porthos’s lips… on his belly, his hands rising smoothly up to cup him behind, his tongue circling, its focus drawing in but not quite landing yet.

Porthos looks up. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes _please_.”

Porthos digs his fingertips into his flesh with a growl. “Yes _where?_ ”

Eyes hooded, a small smile rising on him, he looks down, quirks an eyebrow. “Please, Porthos, will you kiss my cock?” Even though he’s been tugged into a gaming mode, the shock of saying it, of combining that name with it, rings through him with a rush of blood.

He sways, then sways again as lips and tongue restart their journey, slow and heady, across the flesh of his belly and then, for the first time…

“Ah, God.”

“Mmmh.”

He steadies himself with a caress of Porthos’s hair as the man kisses up the side of his shaft, the very tip of his tongue making tiny spirals, the unique sensation of…

“Oh, _new…!_ ”

“What?”

“Um. Hah. Moustache. New.”

“Focus, Musketeer.”

Instead of moving towards the head, Porthos now moves back down. Aramis feels his toes squirm against the boards, then Porthos’s tongue lap his balls.

“Oh dear Christ, have mercy.”

“Not unless you beg for it,” replies Porthos, muffled somewhat.

He bathes his sac with broad lashes of his tongue and those occasional narrow-tip twirls, demonstrating the same single-minded purpose he brings to everything he does, especially new skills.

Aramis finds himself making a kind of uhmm, _uhmm_ sound, surprising himself with how loud it becomes as that wicked tongue delves deep beneath, making him hiss and sway, so that Porthos’s fingers dig into his flesh again to steady him.

“Dear Christ, that’s good,” he breathes. “Where did you… how…?”

“Hush,” comes Porthos’s voice, thickly, “or I’ll be forced to stop.” 

Aramis whimpers, then moans as the fingers of one hand trail from behind to quiver across flank and belly to grasp the root of him, tug, then… wander away again. He makes a sound suspiciously like a growl that sharpens to a keen as Porthos, without warning, envelopes his cock, lips closing just below the head.

A few swipes of his tongue later and Aramis can feel fatigue and the various emotional shocks of the last three days conspiring with this intensity to ruin his balance. Reflexively, he seizes Porthos by back of his hair, stutters “St-stop! Please! Sorry!”

Porthos withdraws without a fuss, gazes up. “Everything all right?” 

“Need. Sit. Steady. Not. Legs.” 

“Ah,” says Porthos, as he settles Aramis with every sign of solicitousness, drawing him across the bed to lay out fully. “Probably your best work to date. Thus the poet falls,” he declaims, looking down at him, propped on one elbow. “If they could only see you now…” and he shakes his head, sorrowful as an owl.

Aramis tucks his hands behind his head, crosses his legs at the ankles, gazes up at the ceiling as though to a sunny sky. “They’d be gazing in admiration, as you know fine well.”

“I do cut a magnificent figure, it’s true.”

Aramis sits up a little, lets his gaze scroll the length of him. “Eh, pretty good,” he says, dismissively.

“Ohoho…”

Aramis lets his head slide back to the mattress. “I’ve had better,” he says, deliberately.

“Ohhh…” he says, shifting to dance his fingers, feather-like, down Aramis’s chest. “Bloody have you…?!”

Aramis is fairly sure that he’s never going to get over the shock of Porthos’s mouth on his, time and again. Fire strikes, rolling up from belly to throat in an instant, and he twists under Porthos’s touch, letting his hands fly everywhere without forethought or finesse.

Porthos pulls back and leans in close to his ear. “You still haven’t…” he murmurs, nipping his earlobe gently.

Still haven’t what? Climaxed? Told him about tomorrow? Said his evening prayers?

“What?!”

“Shown me,” another nip, a nuzzle under his ear. And now he’s feeling thoroughly wrong-footed - this is his own favourite way to pleasantly disconcert people.

“Shown you what?”

“How you like it.” A slow kiss to his neck. Fuck. “What you do,” another, lower, slower, “when it’s only,” collarbone, a flick of tongue, “ _your_ pleasure at stake.” His tongue trails down and lands on Aramis’s nipple with a throaty hum, his lips tweaking at it until Aramis’ breathing is unsteady and his fingers fisting against Porthos’s sides.

“Oh God.”

He pulls back again to prop his chin on his fist. “Please. Show me?”

Bastard. Oh, the bastard.

This is exactly why you shouldn’t go to bed with your friends, he scolds himself.

_This is exactly why you should._

Damn.

He takes a deep breath.

“I…” God. How is _he_ , of all people, finding it difficult to articulate his desires?!

_Because you’re usually too busy spinning them out of other people._

Good point.

“I like to be touched…” Porthos nods, frowning slightly, “everywhere but _there_ , until there’s nowhere else left.”

Porthos grins. “You even tease yourself.”

He shrugs. “Guilty as charged.”

“Show me.”

Oh God. He feels peeled and intensely vulnerable.

Closing his eyes makes it easier, he decides. He sends one hand up to his neck, to rub up into his hair at the back, the other down his front slowly, flat-palmed, then back up, fingertips gliding over his belly and chest, then pinching his nipple and rolling it. He reaches down to the front of his thighs, setting up a soft, tickling motion while his other hand plays with the other nipple. He cants one leg and moves the tickling fingers to the back of his thigh, pinching the nipple to a gasp and shift of hips. He hears Porthos’s breathing hitch when he puts his own fingers to his mouth, starting to lap and circle with his tongue, pulsing his lips around them, running the curving point the whole length from palm to tips, other hand starting to clutch at the place at the junction of hmm… _semimembranosus, semitendinosus, tensor fasciae latae, adductor magnus… gluteus maximus_.

And now he swaps, one hand running up, the other running down, humming around the other set of fingers as he sucks and bites gently, pushing images in front of his mind - a flickering set of cameos of favourite moments and imaginings, most vivid among them Porthos’s arching abandonment, the taste and texture of him as he spent himself in Aramis’s mouth, the sound he made when pushed against the mess wall, how he would feel beneath him, writhing, shouting Aramis’s name. His breath on me. His tongue on me.

Oh fuck. Oh now. _Now!_

He reaches, hand trembling, for his own cock, settles his fingers around the root, then feels a hand take his wrist and pull it back a crucial amount. His eyes fly open on a moan that edges on a whimper.

Porthos is smirking at him. “Hmm,” he says, “I’m not sure you’ve teased yourself enough yet.” 

“Oh _God_ ,” he groans, straining towards himself, and Porthos’s grip tightens reflexively. A jolt to his stomach and his cock jumps. Shit. 

There’s a hard-breathing, lip-bitten pause.

“Aramis,” and his voice is thoughtful, “when I pinned you earlier…”

“Yes…?”

“How did it make you feel?”

“Against the wall? I. I liked it,” he confesses, a little breathless. “I… _really_ liked it.”

“And if I did that now…?”

“Oh fuck…” He squirms, eyes closing, as the thought describes red-hot twists down him.

“Yes?”

“Oh God, yes…”

The slight creak and rustle of the mattress is the most warning he gets before both his hands are pinned to the bed.

“Fuck. _Fuck!_ ”

“Oh, God,” Porthos’s voice is heavy with an awed arousal. “You _really_ like that.”

“Mmh. _Mmmmh!_ ”

Porthos’s grip is immovable, and each push against it tightens his core another notch. So few women have had the desire or ability to master him like this. It rushes through him like mead and he writhes.

“Say the word,” breathes Porthos, “and your hands go free. Got it?” 

“Yes. Y-yes. Ohh!” Porthos’s grip shifts, pulling his hands above his head and holding them with one hand. The other flits over his torso, expert fingertips so gossamer-light, it’s barely like being touched at all. Porthos kisses him, again keeping it maddeningly light, when he… Oh God, when he wants to be pounded into the mattress. His teeth grit. Fuck.

“Fuck! _Fuck!_ ”

“Language,” reproves Porthos, a hard kind of grin in his voice.

“Hah! Esto es c-como una jo-jodida… tortura, hijo de _mmhn!_ de puta! No te, te atrevas a- _aah!_ parar! ”

Porthos chuckles evilly, trailing what feels like a spit-split fingertip from behind his ear to his chest. “Oh, right…?”

“You have nnno i-idea…!”

“I think I can guess.” A nipple-rolling pause. “And you leave my mother out of it.”

“Joder!”

“Aramis, do you want me to gag you…?”

A long pause. “No…?”

Porthos laughs loud and long at this, leans a little weight against the centre of his chest.

“You are in so much trouble, my friend!”

“Ausgezeichnet!” his heels treadling against the mattress.

“Now you’re just showing off…”

“Kiss me. Oh, God, please kiss me, Porthos.”

“Damn,” he says, softly, and bends to do just that.

Soon he’s covering Aramis with his body and they’re grinding together: hot, moaning, unelaborate. Porthos releases his hands and he’s raking them down his back and up into his hair. His weight and heat are delicious on him - everything he wants, even as he works hard for each breath, pushing back up into the body above him which clutches into his side hard enough for bruises.

Porthos breaks back. “I’m going to make you come now,” his voice hoarse and low.

“Oh God, _please_.”

Porthos captures his hands again and he keens, high-pitched and desperate, hips bucking against air. Again he’s rearranged and held by one of Porthos’s hands, and this time feels the other brushing against his mouth. He opens wide, laying his tongue everywhere he can reach, taking those clever fingers deep inside, painting panting stripes onto his palm until Porthos, groaning, moves his hand down to slick his aching cock with his own spittle - simple, strong strokes and that tongue writhing into his mouth all that’s needed to “Oh God, I’m co-”

Porthos dives to cover him with his mouth and, on a shout he feels shredding his throat, he comes hard into him, spasming about his core and dropping like a stone.

He feels his hands freed, kissed, and he twists to pull Porthos’s mouth to his.

“But…” says Porthos, thickly, before Aramis hums at the taste of himself, driving to find it, and he lets out his own moan, then gathers Aramis up in a bearhug, rocking him gently until Aramis slips into the welcoming dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spanish isn’t one of my languages. Beyond “please’, “thank you”, “beers”, “balls”, “son of a whore’, and the numbers one to four, I’m stuck with guesswork, for the most part. Apologies for any dreadful mistakes I’ve made in my use of Google Translate. Feel free to give me a better translation! ☺
> 
> On the other hand, I can now say “Fuck!” in Spanish, so _that’s_ nice…
> 
> (I’ve decided against ¡ at the beginning of the exclamations, since they weren’t even suggested until a couple of decades after this is set.)
> 
> In other news - this fic is taking me far longer that I anticipated. The characters keep twisting out from under me, which is vexing, but appropriate, I suppose. It was going to be a one-shot. Then a two-chapter work (seduction and culmination), then they got chatty and angsty _and_ horny, and behold the ever-lengthening fic!


	4. Parley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a white flag… and some long-overdue communication. And angst.

Aramis surfaces from his second brief embrace of unconsciousness to a faint movement, and an equally faint but familiar sound.

“Porthos…?” he asks, tongue slow and blurred.

“Mmh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah?”

“Are you…?” his voice sharpens with his suspicions.

“Hmwhat?” His breathing is coming in gasps.

“ … taking care of business…?”

“Hah. Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t mean to–”

“You didn’t mean to take your hand to yourself?”

“Didn’t mmean to… wwake you.”

“Hard to say,” he replies, struggling to sit up.

“Damn. Right.”

To Aramis’s astonishment, he can feel himself start to stir. He looks around – it is _still_ dark outside. He tries to calculate what the time must be, how long he was out by the level of the candle, then realises that he just does not care.

The sound of Porthos pleasuring himself is producing a swirling sensation in his gut of mingled pleasure, confusion, and something it takes a moment to identify as a strange, small species of guilt, which he chooses to ignore. He finally looks around to find that Porthos has rearranged him so that his head is on the pillow, for which he’s grateful, though the pillow smells confusingly of d’Artagnan, which isn’t something he wants to think about while in this state. He also sees Porthos, propped up against the head of the bed, eyebrows peaking in the middle, mouth drooping, hand working on himself.

It’s an arresting sight, but Aramis continues to fight blankets and wrestle the call of the mattress. Porthos’s eyes are open and his mouth curves in a slack kind of smile, one that he’s seen hundreds of times before – the end of a long, boozy night, lights low, even Athos smiling, all lapped around with the warmth of camaraderie.

He kneels up, finally, says: “Let me help you.”

“Heh. What did you have in mind?”

He shakes his head. “I’m going to have to improvise – I am all out of plans.”

“Come here and, ah, _improvise_ on me, then.”

What he wants, more than anything, is closeness, like a hunger. He pulls himself over to prop himself on Porthos’s shoulders then, as he envisages what happens next says: “Up on your knees.”

Another grin, this time sideways, with a hint of mischief. “All right…”

He shuffles in close, knee between his thighs, eyes locked with Porthos’s. He reaches down and lays a hand lightly on his shifting fist, doing nothing but assessing its rhythm, the small twist that comes just below the head, then starting to lay his own pressure on, fingers rippling, and dips forward to kiss him gently. Porthos, a few steps further down the road, cups the back of Aramis’s head, deepening the kiss just this side of brutally. He loosens his grip on himself and fumbles for Aramis, who is swelling only slowly. Aramis shakes his head, lifts Porthos’s hand off him, and starts to lick the palm clear of the traces of Porthos’s arousal.

As he slips his fingers into his mouth, Porthos’s face drops, faint sound gathering at the back of his throat. Aramis starts to harden in earnest at this, jutting forward to nudge his own shifting knuckles, but still feeling no desire for physical climax, just to touch, to feel, to hear; close, closer. Porthos, moaning, grabs him by the small of his back with his spare hand and pulls him in, kissing at the corner of his mouth until Aramis relinquishes his fingers and turns to him.

Porthos pulls Aramis’s hand off him and replaces it with his own, wet from his mouth, reaching to hold Aramis in the same grip. He feels a shock go through him at the feel of Porthos tight against him. And then Porthos’s hand starts to move.

“Ah, fuck, fuck, _fuck!_ ” he mutters, head rocking.

“Such poetry,” groans Porthos on a smile, capturing his mouth for another kiss. He groans again. “Auh, I can’t… can’t last…”

“Then don’t.”

Aramis cups his face with his hands, kissing him soundly, running his fingers over his curls, making every sound of appetite as his own hunger mounts, feeling Porthos harden and throb, guttural, breathless, spasming and spending himself on Aramis, who continues to kiss him, even as a corner of his mind is wondering how to deal with this.

To his intense surprise, Porthos continues to stroke him, obscenely slick now, and he’s torn between the urges to take care of his brother, and to let himself be taken care of. It's the strangest melange and, in the end, it’s only Porthos muttering “come on, come on, you’re so beautiful when you come” that tips the balance, along with the sight of him – focused and swaying, marksman with a watermelon – and he can’t deny Porthos anything, could never, ah, ah God, _yes_ , kissing him, tasting his sweat, thrusting into his grip, Christ _God_ , yes.

“Let go,” Porthos is saying, a little wildly. “ _Please_ …” and he does, a gentle crest and falling into his arms after, safe, here, safe.

Aramis can’t quite tell if he is laughing or crying, clinging to Porthos’s shoulders, babbling something about the climax of his heart and Porthos saying “shh,” and “come on” and him saying “I did that already” and sniggering and kissing him – quick, wet kisses and is that sweat or tears and Porthos saying “for God’s sake, sit down” and him crossing himself to temper the casual blasphemy he’s fallen into time and again recently and them slumped against each other and. 

And he’s coming back to himself now, sticky and swaying, saying: “We need to clean up.”

“Yeah, that’s true enough.”

“D’Artagnan is going to kill us.”

“Not if we’re clever.” 

“But we’re both fucking idiots, remember?” 

“Yeah, you can say that again. Anyway, we can take him.”

“Don’t think Constance would be too pleased about that.”

Porthos swallows a choke of laughter. “I would _not_ want to get on her bad side, that’s for sure. That woman terrifies me.” 

“Really?” 

“In a good way.” 

Aramis’s sight and brain are starting to come into focus again. “My braies,” he says, on a small, quivering yawn.

“What about ’em?”

“Get some water on them,” he points at the basin and ewer, “use them as a cloth.”

“Oh! Well, finally found a use for the fuckers,” he grumbles, jovially enough, casting around for the garment.

They take turns to scrub at themselves with either side of the damp braies, water running down in tiny rivulets to the wooden floor. Porthos curses softly and, clearly unable to think of anything better for the moment, drops the cloth to try to soak it up.

Aramis sits cross-legged on the mattress at the end of the bed, back to the footboard, head in his hands. 

“You all right?” 

“Just tired.” He examines his hands in the candlelight, drops them to his lap. “Can’t decide what to do in the time left.” 

“You in a hurry to get somewhere?”

“We’re, uh, meeting the King tomorrow, well, later anyway – remember?” 

“Yeah, but…”

“So do I sleep now – and, if so, where? – or just give it up as a bad job?”

“And do what instead?” 

Pack? Say my prayers? Write a letter that explains everything?

“You have somewhere you got to be?” 

He shakes his head. “No, no.” 

Porthos sits on the edge of the bed, side-on from Aramis. He looks out at the room, looks down, looks up, but not at Aramis.

“So where is it you’re heading?” His voice is quiet, low, but not entirely level.

“Er. What?”

“Tomorrow, or soon after, at a guess.”

“Go- wh-…”

“You’re going to have to come up with something better than that. When you tell us.” He’s still not looking at him.

“I-I.”

“You _were_ going to tell us, weren’t you?”

“Porthos–”

Silence. He can hear his breathing, like that of a man tamping down pain.

“I made a vow.”

“You made a vow.”

“I. When I was in prison. To. To God.”

“Ah.” He sniffs. “So, you’re leaving the world, then, not just us.”

A long pause. “How did you…?”

A deep sigh. “Come on – you don’t have any stupid friends. I may not have even the education the pup’s had, but I’m a long way from stupid.”

“I never sa–”

“And I know you. Really well.”

“You do, don’t you…”

“You dropped a ton of hints, besides, tonight – whether you meant to or not – and you’ve been silent where you’d normally be chatty, and then switching it up.” He finally twists to look at Aramis, who finds his heart leaping into his throat. “I mean: what was all that ‘last confessional’ stuff about, eh…?”

“Shit…”

“No more secrets.”

“No more secrets,” he says, immediately.

He lets out a hard chuff of breath on a grim, swift baring of teeth, looks down at his hand gripping the side of the bed. “I always knew it would be difficult to compete with, well, the whole of womankind, but competing with God? Nah.”

Aramis closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly.

“Are you angry?”

“Nah.” He sniffs. “Well, that’s a lie.” A pause. “All right – not as much as I was about,” Aramis hears his jaw tighten around the next words, “the Queen.”

“Por–”

“No more secrets.”

“No more.” He opens his eyes, reaches towards him. Fails to bridge the distance. “I swear, Porthos, you’re the first to know – I only chose this path the other day.”

“I’m not going to lie: I hate this.”

“I know.” 

He turns more fully towards him, touches gazes for the first time since the conversation began. His breath still sounds laboured. “See, I thought tonight might be Hello, but it was Goodbye for you, wasn’t it? And I fooled myself for a few hours there, but…”

Aramis flashes to Porthos’s anger in the mess, and how it melted. Damn.

“It can’t be both? No, sorry,” he says at the shift of Porthos’s expression, “that was cruel. And selfish.”

Porthos acknowledges this with a suspiciously rapid blink and a nodding easing of his jaw. His eyes slide, then return. “Aramis, are you _sure?_ ” 

“Yes,” he says, simply. “If I’m not as good as my word, then what is my word worth? If I only choose God when it’s easy, then my devotion means nothing.”

He can see Porthos’s jaw working, then he nods, curtly. “All right.” He understands what that part of honour means, even if he scoffs often at the parts Athos is wont to espouse with one breath and deride the next.

There is a space of silence. After a while he asks him: “What do _you_ want to do?” 

“What: now?” 

He nods. “Now.” 

“Wouldn’t hurt to lie down for a bit, even if we don’t get much actual sleep.”

“With me?” 

“With you, you wanker. Come on.” He gets up and blows out the candle. The embers of the brazier give him just enough light to get back to the bed.

“Who gets the damp patch?”

“Shit!” He hauls the pillows to the other end of the bed and pokes Aramis until he lies down next to him, legs slanted slightly to dodge the aforementioned area of the sheets.

“We’ll have to tidy up a lot,” muses Aramis, wriggling to bestow the blanket and top sheet over his feet. He feels the physical space between them like an ache.

“Well,” says Porthos in a pragmatic tone, “best wait until it’s a bit lighter. Pup won’t be back for a while, in any case.” 

“You think?” 

“I think if they’ve all stopped shagging yet it’ll be a miracle.”

Aramis doesn’t even bother trying not to envisage what the three of them are up to. He imagines Athos solicitous and thorough, self-effacing; d’Artagnan energetic and enthusiastic, a little needy; Constance very much in control until the very moment she can no longer be. He pictures their faces, hears their joy, shakes his head rapidly in the dark.

“I like bossy women,” says Porthos, who has clearly been thinking along similar lines. “I’ve just worked it out – women who really know what they want. Makes everything much easier, for a start, but… I guess it’s also what I was used to until I met other women. Outside the Court of Miracles.”

“And you’ve no time for mystery.” 

“Huh,” says Porthos, in acknowledgement of the echo. “Mystery’s all right, it’s just coyness I get fidgety around.”

“Sounds like I should have taken time to get to know Flea better…”

“Hah! She’d eat you for breakfast!”

“Excellent!”

“What about you?” 

“Me?” 

“What do you look for in a woman? Or should I be asking: in a man…?”

He’s silent for a moment, decides to answer the sincerity in Porthos’s tone with his own. “You’re only the second man I’ve taken to bed. And I think… what I find attractive in people is a little difficult to put into words.” 

“From the evidence, you’d shag anything that moves.” 

“You wound me to the quick, brother.” 

“Actually,” he says, slowly, “the only one who doesn’t fit is the Lady, er, Governess…? Sorry.” 

“Marguerite. How so?”

“Everyone else has been strong in some way. The ones you’ve actually wanted, that is.”

“Hmm.” He is, of course, right.

“So…” drawls Porthos, in a way that tells him mischief is imminent, and it makes his heart ache, abruptly, “no more secrets…?”

“I’m not telling you about the Queen,” he says, quickly.

“You wound me to the quick, brother.”

“Pretty much anything else is fair game.”

“Excellent!”

He sighs. They are clearly not going to sleep any time soon. 

“All right then: what was it Constance was whispering to you at the end there?”

“I can’t tell you that, brother,” he says, gently. “It’s not my secret.”

“Ah.” He scratches his chest briefly. “Would you shag her?”

“ _Constance?_ ” He considers. “D’Artagnan would kill me.”

“Assuming he wouldn’t, though. I mean: he’s already sharing her…”

“You think? Completely?”

There’s a meditative pause. “That’s quite the image,” he says, slowly.

“Mmh.”

“But assuming.”

“Athos would _definitely_ kill us. Or scold us to death.”

“Well, we can take Athos between us.”

“Now _there_ ’s an image…”

“Huh.” He shuffles. “So… okay… would you shag… Athos…?” His tone is genuinely curious, a little more tentative.

“Er, if he, I mean… probably?”

“He is a bit gloomy, I suppose, though you do have a taste for the tragic.”

“Hah. And assuming he had eyes for anyone else.”

“True. How about d’Artagnan?” 

“Definitely.”

“Blimey, that was decisive!”

“You?” 

“Would _I_ fuck them?” 

“Both together or one at a time?”

A choking cough of laughter. “You are going to make a terrible religious.” 

“I’m getting it all out of my system now.” 

“Oh right?”

“Drinking, gambling, fornication…”

“And then confession…?”

“Probably.”

“Probably.”

“Maybe I’ll save it up for my death bed…”

“We’d best make it a memorable night then. Enough to last a lifetime.”

“You can’t _possibly_ …”

“Oh, can’t I…?” He takes his hand and places it…

He whistles, softly, then says:“Just checking – was this caused by thinking about Athos, d’Artagnan, or me on my deathbed…?”

“You. A little death. Bed. Yeah, that’s all working…”

Porthos’s hand moves Aramis’s against his partial hardness in a lazy rhythm.

“I can tell.”

“Well, you being the champion lover of Paris…”

“And surrounding areas…”

“What do they make of you in Reims?”

“An effigy.”

“For burning in the streets?”

“For hanging in their bedrooms to summon sweet dreams.”

Porthos’s breath is coming in short, sharp huffs. “I’ll have to. Uh. Mmmh. I’ll have to get my o-own made. Keep it. Mmh. Keep it in my pocket.”

“You want to keep me…” his own breath catches as Porthos’s hand finds him. “Mmmh. You want,” he tries again, “to keep me in your pocket.”

“Heh. Yeah.”

“Is that a euphemism?”

A pause and choke of laughter. “You know I don’t do well with subtleties, brother – I think you’d better spell it out for me.”

He turns on his side, shuffles closer, bends to Porthos’s ear. “You want to hear this?”

“Yes…”

“You’d better kiss me now before my mouth gets really dirty.”

“Oh, dear God,” he groans, turning to kiss Aramis. They spend a groaning, rocking time trading touches, tongues, and thrusts, then: “Go on, then.”

“Hmm?”

There’s a wicked grin in Porthos’s voice. “You wanted to check something about my _pocket_.”

“Well, my dear friend,” he manages after a while, very deliberately. “I was wondering if you were asking me to fuck you.” He hears the lightest gasp. “To slowly open you below, with tongue and fingers, oil and spit, sink into you, knuckle by knuckle, twist by twist, until you _begged_ me to put this,” he squeezes Porthos’s hand around him, “deep inside you, stroke you from within, hard and fast or slow and tender, whatever your preference.”

“Holy shit,” breathes Porthos.

“Unless I was mistaken…”

“How… How…” pants Porthos, “do you manage to make _poetry_ out of _that?!_ ”

He kisses him hard, tells him: “It’s my gift.”

Porthos kisses him, slow and intent, fingers coming through his hair and gripping at the back of his head. He moans at that, remembering in hallucinatory vividness the strength of those hands set against him.

Still gripping his hair, Porthos lifts himself up on his elbow to move his kisses down to his neck, then chest, levering Aramis onto his back. He then swings himself to kneel astride his torso. Aramis’s eyebrows rise in speculation, and then crease when Porthos slides over him and to the ground, strides unsteadily to the candle, and wrenches it out of its wax to coax it alight from the brazier. As it fizzles into life he raises it high. “Right,” he says, casting around.

Aramis is propped up on his right elbow, gazing at him. “My dear friend–” he begins.

“Where do you reckon it would be?” 

“What?” 

“They’ve been… how long did you reckon they’d been at it?”

“Eh?” 

“Athos and Aramis,” he says, patient, still looking about the place. 

“ _I’m_ Aramis,” he replies, trying to keep his eyes on his friend’s face and failing.

“D’Artagnan.” 

“About five months?” 

“How do you reckon that, then?” He rummages in a low cupboard.

“I think they got together on the Spanish border mission. You know? The one with Rochefort.” 

“ _Really?!_ ” He pulls his head back. “Oh… _that_ ’s why Athos blushed when you asked him if d’Artagnan had found him.”

“You were otherwise engaged, from memory, but we heard d’Artagnan shouting his name.” At least, he’d heard. He couldn’t have sworn to Rochefort, but has to assume that the man never suspected or the pair of them would have been blackmailed or incarcerated.

“Got a decent pair of lungs on him…” Porthos says, absently, sitting back on his heels and looking around, face screwed in enquiry. He anchors the candle on the floor and dives under the bed. “Gotcha!”

“What has this got to…”

“They’ve been at it all that time, they’ll need something,” comes the muffled voice, “to help them.”

A slightly dusty hand rises, with a medium-sized bottle of something in it. It takes Aramis a moment to realise that it’s cooking oil.

Oh.

“You know, now I come to think of it, gun oil would probably do just as well,” says the victor, following it.

“Porthos.”

“But this is probably better.”

“ _Porthos…_ ”

“What?”

“We don’t have time.” His face falls. “I’m sorry. I know you said you wanted _everything_ , but it’s just not possible.” Aramis schools himself to hold tight to Porthos’s gaze. “You’ve never done it before, and… it takes a lot of preparation. I… don’t want to hurt you.”

His shoulders droop at last. “Bugger.” 

Aramis flattens his mouth sympathetically. “Yeah.”

“But you’d like to…”

“Oh yes…” Again, that arousal that edges on fear courses through him.

“What’s it like…?”

“Ah. Well,” he starts, delicately, “I’ve not actually done that with another man…”

“Oh!”

“It was, well, a very _experienced_ woman.”

“Adèle.”

He nods “Adèle. And,” still delicately, eyes dropping, “never with anything quite of, er, that size.”

“Oh.” He chews his lip, then his face sharpens. “So tell me.”

“Tell you?”

Porthos’s eyes glitter; he puts the bottle on the floor next to the bed and moves slowly towards him, warmth gathering in his expression again. He sits on the edge of the bed next to Aramis, trails that maddening touch over his chest. Aramis leans into it, stirring all over, then sits up to kiss him.

“Tell me a story,” challenges Porthos.

I see.

“Lie down, then,” he says. “Get comfortable.” Porthos slides over him again, grinning, and sprawls next to him. “Turn on your side,” he directs him, turning him away so he can slot into his back, put his arms around his chest, “and listen closely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been difficult, reading people’s guesses and suggestions, already knowing – in draft at least – where I intended to take this. Thanks for getting so involved! ☺
> 
> Like [Nevertheless](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14189991), this is growing, almost exponentially. I believe it should only require one more chapter after this. Probably.
> 
>  
> 
> I should probably start writing it, in that case…


	5. Investment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which good use of words proves a key part in proceedings.

Aramis is struck, briefly, by the incongruity of holding someone from behind who’s bigger than him, but also remembers those women who – while not taller – were definitely larger, and, with these pleasant memories lifting a smiling light through him, he begins:

“Are you comfortable?” he asks, hearing and allowing his voice to melt into almost deliberately seductive tones.

Porthos wriggles a little, nestling closer, and Aramis grits his teeth briefly at the feel of his flesh pressing against him, reminds himself of the goal of this particular mission.

“That’s the most important thing,” he says, leaning away a little so that he can stroke the back of Porthos’s shoulders with his left hand, his right caressing his chest in a series of soft clutches. “They need to be comfortable. And already aroused.”

“Mmh.”

“So,” he says, pressing soft kisses along Porthos’s shoulder and the side of his neck, never letting up the rhythm of his right hand, which spirals, slowly, a little lower at each pass, “you lay touches everywhere, increasing the sensitivity of the skin,” a small nip at his neck. Porthos shudders. “It’s slow, and patient, and _focused_.” This time his teeth catch a little deeper in his shoulder. Porthos lets out a small moan. Aramis smiles. _Thought so_.

His right hand is travelling over his abdomen now – broad palm-strokes followed by gentle undulations of his fingertips across that extraordinary muscle definition. He flashes to that all-too-vividly painted image of Porthos, naked, alone, pushing himself repeated, desperately from the ground, arcing and spending on a cry. His teeth catch deeper again into his flesh, an open-mouthed bite on the thought and Porthos makes a sound like a whimper, pushes himself back onto him.

His cock is throbbing, bordering on uncomfortable, but staying, deliciously, just this side of it. _Time to move_.

Licking at where he’s bitten, he nuzzles a little further down his back, shifting his body as he does so – down and away a little, kissing at the top of his arm, licking at his salt-rimed side, easing himself lower with every stroke.

“The focus has to shift,” he explains, a voice like dark honey, “moving your intent closer,” and he licks the seamed flesh along the side of that axe scar, part of him noting, satisfied, how well it’s healed, considering they’d practically had to tie Porthos up to stop him opening it up again.

Hmm.

His right hand slips around his ribs to massage just above his hip; Porthos sighs. He strokes down his thigh, adding a gentle pressure at the back with each stroke, so that it’s natural for Porthos to cock his upper leg forward a little. He pays affectionate attention to the underside of his thigh, the junction between it and his buttock, kissing and gently nibbling his flank as he heads downwards.

“You’re paying attention to how they move,” he says, “what makes them push back against you, what makes them sigh or moan. It’s like learning any other aspect of them.”

“Mmh,” says Porthos.

He scrapes his fingertips up over the curve of him to lay both hands in the small of his back, now massaging just above the main swell of muscle. He imagines laying tongue and teeth over all of it, lets out a small moan of his own, then rescues Porthos’s hand from where it’s started to stroke and lays it gently on his thigh.

“Focus…” he admonishes gently.

Porthos growls softly.

Aramis lays his hands on his buttocks and starts to caress. Porthos immediately switches to a kind of hum, pushing back into his grip, and Aramis lets his fingers drift to edge the narrow crack between the muscles, starting to nudge at much more sensitive flesh, “You narrow your attention,” he says, hearing himself a little breathless, “still hinting, but louder now.” He takes a breath. “And you ask: ‘Is it all right if I touch you here?’.”

“Mmh. Yes. Please.”

“This is the first real test. You have to know how they feel about being touched so very intimately, even in…” he brushes closer, feeling the texture about his fingertips shift, “passing…”

Porthos tenses. Damn. Then, to his utter relief, he arches towards his touch, just ever so slightly. Aramis doesn’t bother to keep the smile from his voice. “The first test passed, you can start to explore, keeping everything very gentle, very light.”

True to his word, he performs long, feathery strokes, tickling the back of his balls (a small hiss), then scrolling past, along the perineum and the ring itself (a tiny moan), to his tailbone, then back again.

He starts to kiss again, lower now, licking over the curve of his lower back, feeling the gorgeous muscles of a horseman, of someone who can spend hours stood perfectly to attention, quiver under his touch. He is starting to run out of bed and tucks his legs up a little, thinking about how the next move should go.

“You want to go deeper, feel more, have _them_ feel more, so you ask: ‘I’d like to move you onto your front. Is that all right?’.”

“Uh. Yes.”

He carefully tilts him to his front, moves his legs a little further apart, and kneels, massaging his buttocks, parting him with his thumbs, bending to let his breath play over him. A small whimper lets him know that this stimulation is being felt by the sweat-stung skin.

“You want to taste them–”

“ _Mmh!_ ”

He bends closer again, “– feel them buck back against your mouth, so you ask: ‘Can I–’”

“Oh, fucking God yes, please!”

Aramis smiles – he can’t not – and, as he’s longed to do for what feels like a long while, bends further forward to nuzzle the flesh in front of him with lips and teeth, sends out his tongue to lick at the base of his spine. Porthos whimpers loudly, lifts towards him, trying desperately to get his tongue lower; Aramis rocks with him instead, continuing to tickle his tailbone, trying not to chuckle. After a small while of listening to Porthos’s whimpers deepen, he relents just as they turn to growls, hears them climb higher again as he tastes him directly, lays strong strokes against him, over and over, perineum to tailbone, then spirals around the ring until he’s tongueing it directly and Porthos is arcing back into his touch.

The taste is extraordinary – a bittersweet musk, salt, leather, even a hint of his earlier spend – and Aramis thinks he could become as addicted to this as he is to the taste of a woman. On that thought he drives forward, pushing deeper into the ring of muscle, feeling it pulse against him at every panting push, each one a little deeper, feeling his body’s instincts fight each other on every thrust of those hips back towards him, hearing it in the strangled, pillow-muffled sounds.

“Aw fuck, aw _fuck!_ ” Porthos is moaning. His arse is tented off the bed, thighs straining to get him closer to Aramis.

“Language,” says Aramis, absently, sitting up on his heels and giving Porthos a few leisurely strokes along the base of his cock, so that Porthos writhes and calls him what can only be some very bad names in a broad cant.

“And you think:” letting his thumb drift so the pad rests against him, circling and nudging infinitesimal degrees, “maybe it’s time to take this to the next stage…” Porthos stills dramatically, slews his head around on the pillow, stares at Aramis, who leans forward, out of his sight, to give a leisurely bite to his nearest arse cheek.

“Oh God…”

He sits up again. “So you say: ‘I’d like to put my fingers inside you – where I’ve been laying my tongue so diligently,” a tiny pressure with the thumb, a rumble from his throat in response. “Would that be all right?’. And while you’re waiting,” he says, leaning and groping for it, “you fetch the oil.”

“Fingers,” says Porthos.

“Yes.”

“Finger _s_ _plural_.”

“We’ll start with one, see how that goes.”

“Thank fuck for that.”

“Besides,” he wiggles them, gleaming and slick, “my fingers are quite slender, considering.”

“Mmmh.”

He shrugs. “Or we can stop there, you can turn over, and I can lay my tongue and oiled fingers elsewhere.”

“Fuck.”

“Or even do nothing further at all.”

“Hmm.”

Aramis smiles, and waits, summoning all his training in staying completely still, a warm, slight smile in his eyes.

He can see Porthos’s jaw work, once, then he nods brusquely, says: “Do it.”

“Do what?” His voice is warm but firm.

“Your fingers. Inside me.” His voice catches on the last part and Aramis leans towards his face, concerned.

“You don’t have to, brother. If this is where you stop, that’s all more than fine.”

“No,” and the word is low, “no, see, I _want_ to,” and his voice is ragged, “I just–”

Hmm. “Asking makes you think about it, and you want to be released from thinking.” 

“God. _Yes_.” He sounds somewhere between relieved and a little awed.

“Ah.” He considers. The correct wording is everything. “Then, brother,” he continues slowly, “do I have your permission to take you as far as I think you can go here and now, only stopping if you say so?” 

He thinks he recognises in Porthos’s expression that element of fear that has lent an edge to his own profound arousal all this night. He sees his eyes widen briefly, then shutter as his mouth slackens.

“Kiss me,” he says, hoarse and hungry.

Aramis bends forward to him as he raises himself on his arms and they kiss, as deeply as the strange angle will let them, and Aramis is tempted to just forget this, slide beneath him, take his weight and his heat and his kisses; simple, ecstatic, but… until he’s explicitly released from what he almost feels is a promise to his brother, he can’t.

Porthos balances himself on one arm so he can hook a familiar palm around the back of his neck, press their foreheads together. “I trust you,” he says. “Do it.”

And with that he lays himself down again. Aramis is shaking. Just a little, and it’s the combination of sleep deprivation and maybe a little dehydration, plus everything his heart, mind, and body have gone through lately, but… but he’s a soldier. Even if only for a few hours more, it will inform so much of what he is for a lot longer, he thinks. A soldier and a physician. A lover. A marksman. Yes.

Shaking his head, he anoints both hands with oil and slicks them over Porthos’s buttocks and lower back, eliciting a groan. Kneeling across his thighs, he presses firm, rhythmic strokes upwards, leaning his weight into his friend, who visibly relaxes, making deep, guttural sounds at each push. Aramis lets his rhythm slow, his hands linger over the flesh, now lighter, melding into a caress. Porthos’s note lightens, lengthens, as Aramis’s fingers start to part him and his thumbs begin to push deeper.

He now slots one knee between the other’s legs, adds a small, extra trickle of the oil, and runs a well-slicked middle finger down to circle, feels Porthos push back towards him immediately, deepening. He finds he’s holding his breath, lets it out slowly as he returns the pressure, hears Porthos moan, a keening note as he enters him.

Oh God, oh God, he’s chanting silently. It is so warm, and so very, very tight, and he’s fighting that snapping, growling, ambushing urge to plunge deep, to, to _take_ Porthos, opening him swift and ruthless and… but his mind won’t follow that image any further, shuts it down cold, distastefully. He feels like he’s passed a test, bested the Devil, takes a deliberate, slow breath, pushes further in.

“At this stage,” he tells him, “you’re trying to find the point at which they quiver. It sits deeper in some than others, but is unmistakable, once you–”

“ _Unh!_ ” says Porthos, just as he rubs over a smooth, slightly rounded area. “Oh _God!_ Oh God, Aramis, that… _Please!_ ”

He massages it again and again, Porthos’s hips gyrating back against his hand. He lays his tongue against the place of joining, rewarded by heavier movements, more groaning.

He looks down. Porthos has raised himself up and his cock is swollen and dripping. He wants it in his mouth very badly, he realises. Very badly indeed. And for a moment he also envisages, bright as fever, himself beneath Porthos, oiled, stretched, breached by… he closes his eyes. It doesn’t help. He applies himself to kissing Porthos’s balls, laying broad, sucking licks on the sac, with a hint of teeth that has Porthos whimpering.

He wonders if he’s ready for… Oh, he is.

“And now, with them relaxed, practically _begging_ for more stimulation, you add a little more oil, and ease an extra…”

“Oh _fuck!_ ” And he’s bucking back on that as well.

“God, that’s tight,” he finds himself muttering, feels himself swell a little, fights the urge to touch himself.

“Oh yes, you bastard; you beautiful, fucking bastard, fucking _yes!_ ”

Aramis smiles, curves his fingers a little on the next thrust.

“Augh! God, you treacherous, beautiful cunt; God, _yes!_ ”

“Um…” his rhythm falters a little.

“By Christ,” he vows, “if you stop now I will break your _fucking_ arm.” 

“Please don’t,” he murmurs, as mildly as he can.

“Sorry, sorry, just–” he bucks back hard and Aramis braces his wrist. “Oh _fuck! Deeper, you gimcrack!_ ”

His face squeezes in a silent convulsion of humour, and he straightens it to say: “Porthos,” quiet but stern, injecting a little Athos into his tone, “do I have to gag you?”

“Give me your cock. That’ll do the trick!” He feels his eyes widen and his treacherous member hardens. Damn!

Porthos’s arm shifts and Aramis peers towards him. He has his eyes buried in one hand.

“Are you all right?”

“I – oh fuck yes, _deeper, you whoreson_ – can’t seem to st– _oh, sweet fuck, yes, right to the hilt!_ – shit, sorry – _mmmh!_ ” he bites down on his own forearm again as a gag and Aramis feels a change inside him – a brief but deep-seated contraction that he thinks he knows from the other side.

He is very close.

Porthos suddenly shifts his upper body, reaches back with the nearest arm to Aramis, who reaches forward with his free hand. Their fingers tangle; Porthos is panting. “I think,” he says. “Oh, God, I think I’m gonna… _is that even possible?!_ ”

He squeezes his fingers. “Oh yes.”

“ _Fuck!_ ” Aramis pulls himself free just as Porthos clenches a fist. “Sorry, sorry!”

“No,” he says, hearing his voice teetering, “no, no apologies,” plants kisses everywhere he can reach. And suddenly he can’t bear it. He feels too far away from him, needs to see his face, feel his breath.

“Turn, turn, please,” he’s moaning, easing Porthos to his side then his back without losing contact, slots one leg behind his thrusting arm to brace it, the other bent double along his lover’s side, feels his feverish palm hook at his neck, his other arm wind about his torso, grunts as Porthos pulls himself up against him to kiss wildly, blindly, testing every shred of Aramis’s ragged strength as he rocks onto him.

He’s just holding himself steady now, barely capable of thought, as Porthos thrusts and thrusts, thighs bunching over and over. He watches his head drop back, eyes tightly closed, hands clutching at the sheets, and Aramis, shifting to the side to give him more room, knows that his own face is naked – betraying every feeling boiling in his chest – feels himself brimming with something that feels perilously like an imminent, liquid heat.

“Oh please, _please!_ ” cries Porthos, and he ducks his head as the tears start in earnest.

“I want you in my mouth!” he cries, before he’s even thought about it, “ _Please?_ ”

“Oh God, yes!”

And just as his lips touch him he feels everything contract, holds tight, swallowing and swirling as Porthos arcs and bucks, a wordless cry echoing out of him that he just about manages to muffle with his own hand.

His body heaves and quivers so hard Aramis is momentarily confused, thinking he may be having a seizure, but the convulsions soon ebb with any residual tension and he plummets into the mattress, hoarsely exclaiming, running his hand up over his face and letting it drop away to thump into the mattress.

“Fuuuck…” is all he can say for some minutes. Then: “Um…”

“Oh! Sorry, of course…” Aramis withdraws as softly as he can, then looks around for… tumbling off the bed to grab the discarded braies to wipe his fingers with, realising what a terrible idea this is, and hunting in his breeches pocket for a handkerchief, which he wets before using.

As he comes back to the bed, he sees Porthos watching him, his eyes the only thing that seem capable of movement. His far leg is still canted, but the rest is sunk deep into the abused mattress. They’ll probably have to retighten that as well, if they have any kind of honour.

Aramis sits next to him, says: “I’m just going to wipe the oil off you,” and swiftly, impersonally, uses the clean half of the cloth on him. Porthos’s eyebrows crease momentarily, and he lets out the tiniest sound. Aramis throws the cloth towards the braies and puts a hand on his raised leg. “Want me to help you down with that, brother?”

“Unh-huh. Yh.”

He smiles, puts one hand over his ankle and the other under his thigh, eases it up then straightens it down.

“Mmfh.” He thinks that’s probably “Thanks.” He smiles, feels that it looks a little sad, but Porthos’s eyes are closing again anyway. He bundles as much blanket as he can manage around him, pushes his own legs under it, calls it good enough.

One of them needs to stay awake. He thinks that the slice of sky he can see through the shutters is significantly paler than it was, though all the stars still seem visible. No birdsong has started yet, and his increasingly numb brain can’t seem to remember if they start earlier or later in autumn. Surely later? Of course, but in relation to the dawn…? Um.

He’ll just rest himself, but not lie down. He’ll need his energy. There’s a lot to sort out. A. A lot.

Porthos, mouth slack, starts to snore – a deep, rich sound that makes him smile, abruptly lighter. I did that, he thinks, propping the pillow behind him at the foot of the bed to lean back against it, sitting roughly upright. And I’ll never be able to sleep through the racket. Surely.

As his eyes start to drift closed (just for a moment, just a little) on that thought, he manages to forget that the sound of Porthos snoring is the sound that’s accompanied so many stakeouts, campfires, and overnights in taverns when they’ve shared a bed, and that it’s become, somehow, almost the sound of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Write a one-off, exploratory fic with Aramis and Porthos kissing, the night before he leaves,” I said. “It won’t consume you since it’s not your OTP,” I said. “You’ll probably polish it off in a couple of days – a simple, fun, okay maybe _slightly_ angry one-night-stand between old friends, probably just some mutual masturbation, nothing elaborate, with _very little angst_ …”
> 
> Hah!
> 
> Turns out “my” Porthos just. Does not. Stop. And the dance goes on.
> 
>  
> 
> (help me)


	6. Surrender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which both parties give in to the exigencies of Fate, and a truce is brokered.

Aramis’s awakening involves a hand on his hip. A hand on his right hip and a slightly scratchy… _something_ … on his left. There’s something warm and firm in his lap.

He looks down. Clear across him is a dark arm. His heart bounds at the sight and something like grief washes through him. He lays a hand on it gently. Porthos’s fingers and face flex briefly in response.

His brother lets out a great sigh, and Aramis feels it feathering up his side and then his lips stirring against his hip. He lays his fingertips very softly against the back of his head. “Porthos?”

His lips move with more purpose now, and Aramis starts to warm as he realises what he’s doing. “Porthos…”

A slip of tongue and now his heart rate is picking up. “Oh hell,” he whispers. “Come on, old chap,” he says in somewhat – if he’s honest – halfhearted remonstrance. “Wake up.”

“Awake,” comes the muffled voice immediately, with a deliberate tightening of his hand.

Aramis doesn’t mean to moan, not really, but a fragment of it slips from his throat. Porthos’s fingers and tongue immediately become more insistent against him. “Oh God,” he says, trying to inject some kind of authority into the next part: “we don’t have time.”

“Yeah,” says Porthos, “we do.” He kisses up his hip and over the top of his thigh.

“Oh God…”

“He’ll have you for years to come. It’s still my turn,” says Porthos in a low, freighted voice. And then his mouth engulfs him and he gives everything up to the sensation, growing fully hard in moments.

Porthos is not bothering with subtlety – he clearly means to take Aramis as deep and fast as he can with quick lips and slow tongue, his own moans vibrating around him. His mouth, the hands now gripping each hip, his torso where it surges against his leg – all are fever-warm from sleep.

Aramis starts to rock, as much as he can in this position. One hand caresses Porthos’s hair while the other braces on the bed to afford himself more leverage. Porthos slips his left hand to cup his balls, lets his fingers insinuate themselves along his perineum and just settle, a promise at his entrance, while his thumb describes light circles over his sac. It is exquisite.

For what seems like the first time in his adult life Aramis is not actively trying to delay his climax, and something about this being _Porthos_ – eager, bold, scrambling to learn, freighted with all their history together – is causing every atom of his body in turn to slowly flame until–

“Oh God, kiss me!” he manages, voice completely ragged, pitch oscillating.

Porthos pulls back with an obscene sound. “What, _now?!_ ”

“Please, _please!_ ”

Porthos _swarms_ up him – there’s no other word for it – and Aramis grabs him by the back of the head, presses a messy, choking, whimpering kiss on his hot, swollen lips, torso clenching, hips pumping as Porthos fills his mouth with an urgent tongue, works him with his hand – hard and fast.

“Mmoh, oh _f-ffu–!_ ”

Porthos dives on a growl and takes him deep, covering the rest with his hand and plunging, suckling–

“Ah, ah _Jesus! YES!_ ”

It is thunderous, breathtaking, incomparable, and seems to go on for a very long time, every particle of him wrapped in sweet fire. He loses vision and hearing – every sense except one, in fact – only slowly returning to himself, slumped, utterly boneless except for the hands gripping the sheet and Porthos’s hair respectively in a kind of tetany.

“Chrs!”

Porthos clears his throat in response. In a distant way he’s mildly offended that he appears to be stifling a laugh, then decides that he’s touched? honoured? that Porthos chose not to laugh out loud, then feels sad, then forgets.

“Jzsh.”

“Uh-huh?” His grip on Porthos’s hair is gently persuaded free.

“Mmmh-hh…”

“I’m gonna hug you now.”

“Fckyh.”

“Exactly.”

“Mmmh.”

“Nice, eh?”

He nods against the broad chest beside him, nuzzles into it, making a rhythmic noise at the back of his throat that later he thinks may have been some kind of climax-boozy purr.

“Aramis?”

“Hmm?”

“In about five minutes we’re gonna have to get up, get dressed, and tidy this place up.”

“Ugh!”

“Exactly.”

This time the sound is like a thwarted cat.

“Coz the lad will be here soon.”

“Bah!”

Porthos chuckles at this. Such a nice sound. Can’t I pack it with me?

Damn.

Damn, now I’m sad again.

Bugger.

He winds both arms around his torso, squeezes him tight, and is squeezed, only slightly more moderately, in his turn.

He lets himself just breathe, close and warm and… and–

Damn.

“Safest arms in the garrison,” says Porthos, as though he can hear what he’s thinking. “Come on,” and he presses a kiss to the top of Aramis’s head.

He can’t trust his voice right now, not even to hum, so he squeezes him again, nuzzles into his chest, and lets go because… because a few moments longer and he won't be able to at all, he thinks.

Porthos gives his shoulder a pat as he leans away from him, and when did this room get so cold? He scrubs his face with his hands and then pushes his fingers up through his hair.

He looks up towards Porthos, but doesn’t quite get to his eyes. “Ready?”

A side-shift of jaw. “Let’s do this.”

Every part of Aramis creaks, labouring under this new weight in his gut. It’s been a while since he’s gone without underwear, and he shivers at the touch of leather against his tenderness. He does not look at Porthos, thinks he does not dare.

Once dressed, they confer, as swiftly and near wordlessly as they have ever done on any mission – Porthos will filch the supplies to replace d’Artagnan’s fuel, candles, and bed linen, along with some herbs that he requests; Aramis will strip the bed, scrape the wax off the shelf, and anything else that occurs to him.

Porthos gone, Aramis opens the window wide onto the grey pre-dawn, only a very few stars still visible now between the scudding clouds. He empties the chamber pot, sluices it with a little water for good measure, and sets about stripping the bed. He sighs with relief that the dampness doesn’t seem to have penetrated as far as the mattress. He’s not sure any of the solutions he’d concocted would suffice had it done so. Steeling himself, he dives under the bed to tighten the ties of the mattress, pulling it just a little tauter. It takes longer than he’d like and he emerges dusty, shaking his head vigorously, brushing himself down, and sneezing three times in quick succession. The lad’s been spoiled, he thinks.

He flings the braies and handkerchief in with the bedlinen, ties the corners tight, reminds himself to remove it when they leave, imagines d’Artagnan – or Athos! – finding it, investigating, and shudders in reinforcement.

Now the wax. He sighs over the thought of using his good dagger for this, then points out that he’ll have no need for it soon. He crouches down by the bundled sword belts, finds himself rubbing the dark brown leather of Porthos’s main sword belt between his thumb and forefinger – the broad one that cinches his waist, dented by weapons clips, darkened and worn smooth in a handful of ancient places by chains, pouches, oil, sweat, the comfortable hook of broad thumbs.

He closes his eyes for a slow breath, and brings his fingers to his nose for a moment, then lets them run down and gently cup his lower face in a soft indulgence.

Jaw clenching, he opens his eyes, finds his own belt, draws his main gauche, so recently sheathed in the Comte, stands, finds a small smile for his own vanity and foolishness, and begins to diligently and delicately scrape at the tented puddle and frozen overspill of wax, reflecting that half a moment’s thought earlier would have brought a plate with them, or searched d’Artagnan’s room for something to save this work.

This leads his mind to play over the breathless events that brought them up here, while the blade slides, gentle and precise as any scalpel, any razor.

A creak of boards and change of air. “Well?” he says, without looking up.

“Got ’em.”

“Wonderful,” and he hears his voice come soft and controlled as it has ever been.

“How about you?”

“I have a large handful of wax pieces I’ve no plans for,” gesturing with his head as he planes another parchment-thin layer away, “and an unavoidably darkened patch of wood, but also a box I can shift to cover it.” And a heart full of newly polished memories.

“I’ll go you one better.”

He looks around at last. Porthos is grinning over an armful of clean bedding, holding in his right hand–

“ _Flowers?!_ ”

Porthos sniffs, crinkling eyes above that up-down smirk. “Yeah – see, if they get back,” and he does not mean Constance, “while we’re still here, we say it’s a wedding gift.”

“He won’t bring her here…”

“Course not! But we were drunk and decided to steal him flowers – it doesn’t have to make _sense_ …”

He laughs at last – little more than a gust of breath, but feels his grin all the way up to his crown and down to his chest. Shaking his head, he rolls his eyes. “You are some species of genius, brother.” Where he even got flowers in October, before dawn, at such short notice, is the kind of mystery you enjoy rather than explore.

“Of course!” and he makes an impressively courtly bow around his burden. “Right then!”

Aramis puts down the dagger, takes the flowers and, smirking, puts the rinsed chamber pot on the shelf over the wax stain and arranges them within it.

“There,” he says, stepping back with a flourish, unfeasibly pleased.

“Very dainty,” approves Porthos. “Totally ridiculous. Now help me with this sheet.”

Between them they make the bed drum-tight in minutes, pillows plumped and blanket folded just so. The centre of the bundle of linen reveals several candles and a rather lovely, black, wrought-iron holder.

“More wedding gifts?”

“It's romantic.”

“And fuel for the brazier?”

He points to a final, lumpy pillow case.

“You'll give him splinters.”

Porthos eyes him sideways. “I’ll give _you_ splinters…”

“Easy…”

“I’m not the easy one,” he returns, one dimple deepening, satisfaction ringing from him. Shaking his head, Aramis rakes the ashes from the brazier into the small, metal bucket d’Artagnan keeps for the purpose, and starts to lay the fuel.

“You’re doing that wrong,” observes Porthos.

“Really.”

“Really.” 

“Fine. Give me the candles.”

They circle close to swap places, all mock grumpiness, both of them hitching step and breath as they come close enough to feel each other’s heat for the first time in what feels like hours.

Don’t look. God, don’t catch his eye. You’ll never…

“After you,” says Porthos, quiet and gruff.

“Candles?”

“Here.” 

“Thanks.” 

“Don’t mention it.” He stiffens as he says it. That’s rather. Well…

Too close.

Porthos kneels and starts stacking and laying the fuel in what he considers to be the ideal conformation. Aramis feels his fist tighten, focuses on his breathing for a moment, starts to bestow candles around the room, saving the holder for last, atop the dresser.

As he steps back, final one skewered into place, he finds his thumb flicking as if to genuflect, frowns lightly, then completes the gesture anyway. He finds he cannot subdivide this kind of holiness from the other – communion, commitment, celebration.

He also realises that he will be missing d’Artagnan’s wedding, that he has known this all along. One by one he is hauling up anchors. Each still feels like a loss of strength rather than a gain. Maybe… He can’t complete the thought.

He looks at his hands again, rubs the left thumb over the calluses at the top of his right palm that even lotion and gloves can’t entirely soften. Will they fade? Will he gain a scholar’s marks; his own hands, his stance, his sight forever altered? Or will he retain elements of this his life long – a man apart from his new brothers?

The first he knows of Porthos’s observation of this is his arms coming around his back, crushing his hands between them, his head still bowed but now onto Porthos’s chest.

“Come on, now.”

“Safest arms in the garrison,” he mumbles into his neck. _Sternum. Clavicle. Sternocleidomastoid._

“That’s right.” 

“Maybe in all of Paris.”

“Probably the whole of France.”

He smiles at that, face dented against the high, mailed collar, looks up.

Porthos’s smile fades, his eyebrows creasing upwards as their eyes lock. After a stricken while his head moves forward just a fraction, he murmurs “May I?” on a slow, sad-looking blink, and Aramis, sundered to the quick, only knowing that he wants this kiss, this _last kiss_ like none before, nods, solemn, whispers “Yes,” and closes his eyes, reaching forward.

And it’s soft. So soft. He slides his arms free and clasps Porthos as he is clasped, beards rasping a little, doublets rustling. And it’s so sweet it might just succeed in reining time.

The cockerel outside makes its first stirring chuckles and they slowly lean apart and, for a moment, he wishes they hadn’t, had just backed away, but. No.

“Oh,” he says. “Herbs?”

“Right,” says Porthos, taking another half-step back and patting his pockets, clearing his throat as he does so. He tips sage and rosemary into Aramis’s hands, who picks up a sprig and smiles.

“‘That’s for remembrance,’” he murmurs.

“Eh?”

He has said it in English. “More quotes.” 

“Oh.” 

Aramis strews most of the haul into the brazier, and keeps a little back which he kindles in the small dip at the top of the burner then blows it into smoke so that it will smoulder for a little in the freshening air of the place.

At least, he hopes it is. He can no longer tell.

He knows that he does not want to leave this room, to rip this particular hook out. So he crosses to the window, takes his sash, belt, and hat and tightens himself into being a Musketeer for the last time.

“Pass us those, will ya?” He’s almost sure that Porthos is broadening his accent on purpose – but whether to broaden or narrow the distance he’s no idea.

He smiles suddenly, sails Porthos’s hat to him. The headcloth drops out as he catches it and he tuts, smiling with a shake of head.

“Don’t you throw the belts!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Porthos clamps his hat between his teeth and rapidly smoothes and braids the cloth in place, fingers flashing down his nape and over his shoulder, grinning at him across the brim, and it’s as if nothing has happened. Porthos is still Porthos.

Of course he is.

He raises an eyebrow, checks the lie of his bandolier as Porthos slings and cinches belts around himself. He will need to move fast if they’re to be wearing full regalia. His sash is filthy from rolling on the floor, grappling with Rochefort – he’ll need a fresh one. Everything else can be brushed down or taken from stores. And then returned, of course, he reminds himself. He tells himself not to look down at his pauldron – that’s too obvious. But he does anyway.

And then he stops himself. He’ll wash his face and hair, trim his beard and moustache. Everything else will do very well. And the water will help to wake him up. If his cloak is travel-stained, the sash under his belt a little less than fine? Well, no matter. He is supposed to be abandoning vanity, after all.

Lightened, he smiles up at Porthos, all unguarded, and Porthos blinks rapidly, frowns, and beckons him with a tilt of the head. He nods slightly, follows him out without the last look around that part of him desperately wants to indulge.

Three seconds later he runs back in for the soiled linen, cursing under his breath. Porthos heaves it off him with a shake of his head and they set off again.

The garrison still surrounds them with quiet, but, attuned as they are to its moods, they can feel it mustering into the day around them, and they move, swiftly and silently, along the grey-shadowed corridor and down the stairs to automatically install themselves behind the pillars of the shaded area next to the practice yard. Surging towards them, hair flying, is the man whose hospitality they’ve been so energetically abusing.

Aramis catches Porthos’s eye, then slumps significantly, screws up his eyes, whole body a wince, then moves, shambling a little, into the yard, Porthos barely a faltering beat behind him, abruptly empty-handed. D’Artagnan breezes past and hails them on a double-take. They hail him back, noticeably quieter, turning into his wake.

D’Artagnan twists, continues on his way, walking slowly backwards. “Good grief – were you two up all night?”

“Er, nearly.”

“Did you get _any_ rest?”

“Some,” says Porthos, scratching his jaw, the image of a hungover man squinting into the fine, golden light of a sunny, late autumn day.

“How about you?” asks Aramis, smirking deliberately.

D’Artagnan returns it, still backing towards the dormitory wing. “Oh, well,” he cups his hand behind his neck, “you know. Some.”

“Balance in all things, young Gascon,” he calls to him, both their smiles broadening to grins. D’Artagnan raises his hand in brief salute, twists again and bounds towards the stairs.

“Oh, to be young,” he murmurs to Porthos.

“Speak for yourself, greybeard.”

His hand goes up reflexively. “It’s only a few. And besides, it’s more silver. I think it makes me look distinguished.”

“Will you get to keep it?”

He frowns. “The silver?”

Porthos slants a moue at him, reminiscent of Athos at his most heavily sarcastic.

“Right, the beard. Yes, I think so.”

“And will you have to shave your head?”

He blinks rapidly at him. “Er, yes. The Benedictines. Well, I… don’t know if the brothers at Douai do. But… not until I take orders, anyway.”

Porthos shakes his head. “Poverty, obedience, celibacy, and baldness. You ready for this?”

His eyes widen. “Not really. But…” he shrugs.

Porthos shakes his head again, but says nothing. Aramis can hear him itching to tell him that he hasn’t thought this all the way through. What can he say? It’s true. It’s still the right thing to do.

“Come on,” he says. “I want to bathe, at least a little.”

“Make yourself presentable for the King?”

He shrugs. “Well enough.” He sees Porthos open his mouth and take breath; he raises a hand swiftly. “And before you say: I am not doing this for the Queen. It’s more… not to embarrass the rest of you.”

Porthos hoists an eyebrow. “A bit late for that.”

“Hah.”

“Come on, then,” he concedes, and they begin to stride through the waking yard to the bathhouse.

Aramis can’t decide whether he wishes Porthos close or gone right now, but these small touches of normality are proving a simultaneous balm and tiny, ice-cold prickles in his skin.

“Speaking of the Queen,” says Porthos, in a conversational, but quiet tone, as they walk across the yard.

“Which I thought we weren’t…”

Porthos ignores him. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Uh-oh…”

“I said they were strong, didn’t I? The other thing about the people you fall for? Dangerous.”

He stares at him. He’s finding it difficult to disagree.

“I don’t need to make a list, but think about it: loving _any_ of them could have got you killed.”

“Any of _you_.”

Porthos stops dead, curves forward slightly along the line of his momentum, face squeezing shut for a moment, and it’s not the reaction he would have expected. Aramis has just landed a blow where he meant to lay a kiss and this is all too much on so little sleep.

Tight-lipped, Porthos nods. “As you say,” he manages, stiff-jawed, mouth a grim, downward line. He has lost some colour, and Aramis curses himself richly, gaze flicking around involuntarily to see who’s noticed. No-one that he can see.

He side-steps, catches and holds Porthos’s eyes, is locked, in his turn, in a look he’d never wanted to have bent his way again. _And still more_.  “I’m sorry,” he says, softly.

“No point in sorry, is there,” says Porthos, and he can hear the pain ringing in every syllable, “unless you regret something.” 

“No,” he says, so fast he overlaps him. “No.” They stare at each other. “My only regret?” Porthos’s eyebrows raise a fraction. “That we didn’t do this sooner.” 

“Like: skipped the cards and the stories?” 

“More like: skipped a year or two.”

His heart twinges to see the ghost of a smile on Porthos’s face before he shakes his head. “We didn’t know.”

“Well, we _are_ a pair of fucking idiots…”

The smile blooms a little more firmly now and he feels himself answering it. Like he always does.

Like he always will.

His hand rises, unbidden, reaching for him.

“Gentlemen!”

They twist simultaneously at the familiar voice behind them across the yard. Athos, already hatted, cloaked, gloved, and improbably alert-looking, is holding his watch up by the chain and pointing to it. Aramis grimaces conciliatorily – the same half-guilty rictus Athos is so used to on him, and raises a hand, fingers spread. Next to him, Porthos is raising both hands – _ten minutes_.

Athos rolls his eyes and sends them on their way with a flick of his hand.

“He’s right back on form, isn’t he?” mutters Porthos.

“Well,” says Aramis, “he’s had quite the night, apparently.”

“And him without his bottle of oil…”

“Oh, _come on_ ,” says Aramis, “this is _Athos_ – he’ll have had a spare!”

And Porthos, finally, properly laughs – eyes screwed up, all dimples and flashing teeth, bent over, holding the nearest doorframe for support. And Aramis throws his head back and laughs right along with him, ignoring the sleepy stares of the emerging Musketeers around them, heading to or from their own ablutions.

“Ah!” gasps Porthos, straightening up and wiping his eyes. “I tell you what, brother,” he aims a merry stab of finger at him, “you ever find yourself in the world again, you come and find me and I’ll have one for you and all.”

Shaking his head, heart drifting, grin still clinging hard to him, he grabs him by the wrist, locks eyes.

“It’s a deal.”

“You may regret that.”

“Want to bet?”

“Not this time,” he says, softly. “Not this time.”

The clarion calls. And the night is over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I did it. Finally. Saying goodbye to this was far harder than I’d anticipated; I couldn’t find a fluffy, happy ending. Because that wouldn’t be true. So here it is: not fluffy, but hopefully real enough to work.
> 
>  
> 
> (And why yes, I _have_ left myself some places to head after this. Well-spotted…)
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks again to all of you for your enthusiasm and – in this instance – patience. You’re all ace, you are.


End file.
